Oh look, it's here. What a lovely surprise to return from my second midterm from! 

MOAR. MOAR!!!11!eleven1!  

We know Oz exists in the OUaT 'verse because Jefferson tries (and fails) to obtain Dorothy's slippers from there (at least, I assume those are the "slippers" referenced in "The Doctor."). Also: flying monkeys, and the Oz door inside Jefferson's hat. Why the O.Z. instead of Oz? Because Frankenstein, that's why. (No, seriously, bear with me a moment). The original Frankenstein story doesn't take place in a world with magic, and I refuse to believe that it does because that's just silly. Ergo, OUaT!Frankenstein is from a land with magic, which might as well be the O.Z. because conservation of detail. His love of SCIENCE! and contempt (not disbelief, but contempt) for magic doesn't square with the abundance of magic in the Oz books, but if the aforementioned magic-less O.Z. fanon is taken to be true, it makes a certain amount of sense that a scientist like Frankenstein might think that way.

Frankenstein lived in Central City during the time of Azkadellia's coup. He was interested in manipulating the human body through the power of SCIENCE!, and she needed a way to deal with enemies of the state whose knowledge could be put to dangerous uses by the rebel movement (i.e. Ambrose the Queen's advisor/resident genius). In exchange for the raw materials required to pursue his primary project of reanimating his brother, Frankenstein devised the brain-removal process that Az used to turn dangerous people into harmless headcases (Ambrose—>Glitch). However, since heart-stealing magic doesn't exist in the O.Z., Frankenstein hit a dead end (ah ha ha… heh.) and started looking for alternatives, which eventually led him to Rumpel and Jefferson and the FTR and made Azkadellia aware of the existence of realms other than the O.Z. and the Other Side (which is what Ozites call our world). In the interest of staying on politically-friendly terms with people who had the ability to steal hearts and raise zombie armies (assuming that Rumpel and Regina can do everything Cora does, notch), and probably also to try to learn how to do that because, let's face it, Az isn't a terribly nice person at all, she made a point of making nice with the FTR realm. In the process, she (and the crafty, five-hundred-year-old, hugely powerful witch she carries around inside her head) terrified the heck out of Rumpel (who is only three hundred years old and way more obvious about his motives, and thus rather out of his depth), which is why we haven't seen any Ozites in OUaT yet (Rumpel wants nothing to do with anyone who has a shot at outmaneuvering him, and the witch has two hundred years of experience over him, so he made sure the Dark Curse left the O.Z. alone [I'm assuming that Jefferson was still in Wonderland when the curse took affect, because he's never shown returning to the FTR.]).

Meanwhile, in Wonderland, Cora has been slowly maneuvering into the position of the Queen of Hearts, a process which ends with her taking the old Queen's heart and destroying it. Wonderland being the static realm that it is, she settles into power without a hint of rebellion and for a while all is well, until Alice misses her date with the Rabbit Hole. The Hatter (who isn't actually the Hatter yet) appears in the Glassland (because she's Alice's reflection, see) and starts causing trouble there by not falling into the set archetypes. She begins to establish a power base for herself after getting her hands on a powerful magical sword (the Red King's, which, legend has it, was created when the Looking Glass first came into existence) and generally wreaking havoc. There she meets Jack, White Knight-in-Training, and from him learns about Cora and the Fairy Tale Realm.

(This is because, if we assume that Cora=Wonderland's QoH=Edwina, then Jack must be Cora's son, making him Regina's brother. Presumably he ran away from home as a young boy and went to Wonderland [with either Jefferson's or Rumpel's help, or both] to escape his evil mother.) He's understandably upset about Cora's sudden reappearance in his life, so he's initially open to Not-The-Hatter-Yet's vague plans of taking over everything. Anyway, that changes after NTHY finishes caking up the Glassland by secretly destroying the Vorpal Sword and then telling the Jabberwock about it (in the interest of gaining a superpowerful ally) and both of them (separately) join the mass exodus to Wonderland, where he sulks around with his knight buddies and tries to fly under Cora's radar, and she gets in with the Tea Party and specifically the Hatter (who's old and half-dead from mercury poisoning) and Morris (the March Hare). She initially meets Cora through Morris' cousin, the White Rabbit, and the two hit it off because [a] they're both psychopaths and [b] NTHY is really good at being smarmy. Over time, NTHY poisons the Hatter until he's basically a nonfunctional zombie and she takes over as the Hatter/running the Tea Party. Cora's so pleased by the Hatter's success and general smarminess that she puts her in charge of fixing the Glassland, which has descended into a state of almost total anarchy because of, you know, the Jabberwock.

The Hatter's on good enough terms with the Jabberwock to get it to leave the bulk of the Glassland in place (Everything from the fifth rank/Wabe River up is fair game; everything below that belongs strictly to the Hatter). She builds her Evil Fortress of Doom between the Manxome Marsh and the Bandersnatch runs (third/second ranks—I drew a map of the Glassland, don't judge me) and keeps in contact with Wonderland through Morris, who continues to manage the Tea Party in her absence. She tries to get the Chessmen to act as her personal guard, but, for the most part, they're so shell-shocked over the complete ruin of their home that they refuse. So she sends them over the Wabe River to the Jabberwock. Some of them (led by Jack) escape to the sea and end up on the Isle of Rilchium (see: Hunting of the Snark—the island is unnamed, but the word "Rilchium" from Carroll's explanation of his mashed-up words was too good to pass up), where they find the Caterpillar in the Valley of Mushrooms and ask him to help, please. He doesn't, because he's Mysterious and doesn't like telling other people what he knows (he's like Dumbledore in that respect) even though he knows exactly what's gone wrong and how to fix it (i.e. get Alice to Wonderland and then kill the Hatter). He does, however, send Jack up the Rabbit Hole and into the Aboveground. Cora, being Cora, is not about to let her son slip through her grasp again, so she uses whatever magic trick she used to be in two places at once during "Lady of the Lake" to go up the Rabbit Hole to keep tabs on him. 

Alice comes to Wonderland about ten–fifteen years after Regina casts the curse (which, in turn, is about ten years after the whole mess with the Hatter started and ~five years after Jack left Wonderland, if my math is right. which it might not be. but the Hatter came into existence at ~thirteen and she should be in her early thirties by now (as should Regina and Azkadellia, they're all about the same age), that's twenty-ish years, isn't it? Ah, well, any inconsistencies can be explained away because Wonderland explicitly runs on Narnia time, while the FTR, O.Z., and our world are all explicitly in sync except where Storybrooke was frozen). At some point between Jack leaving Wonderland and Alice coming to Wonderland, the two of them meet, fall in love, get married, have Chloe, have problems, separate. Cora-as-Edwina keeps trying to get her claws into the Stetson* family and, after Alice and Chloe move to Queens without Jack, she starts to succeed, only to have Alice (finally) fall down the Rabbit Hole. Jack goes after her 'cause he's in lurrrve and stuff.

*Stetson=Hat. You know, because the Hatter is Alice's dark side. Mind blown, also puns, also hidden spoilers. I adore this show so much. 

The plot of Wonderland happens. The reason Cora invokes the ultimate decree on the Hatter instead of simply beheading her and/or taking her heart is because she's (perhaps understandably) cheesed off that the Hatter [a] kidnapped her granddaughter and [b] had a very good try at killing her son and daughter-in-law. She's willing to let Jack be caught in the crossfires of this because it means she'll have a free hand with Alice and Chloe after Alice "wakes up"/leaves Wonderland now that Jack's gone. (This backfires on her rather spectacularly when the "hell" that the ultimate decree sends the Hatter and Jack to turns out to be Storybrooke and Jack manages to make it back to NYC in time to prevent Chloe from being the next Regina.) ((Why is the ultimate decree Storybrooke? For the same reason that the Dark Curse is: apparently small town Maine is the absolute worst thing a person from a magic-heavy realm could imagine being stuck in. Why not?)) ((How does Jack escape the curse surrounding Storybrooke? Because the ultimate decree wasn't aimed at him, he just happened to be dragged along for the ride because he and the Hatter were attempting to strangle each other. He's like any normal person who happened to wander into Storybrooke, and he can leave at will a la Emma and Henry. The Hatter, on the other hand, as the intended victim of the ultimate decree, is stuck there, albeit with memories intact because the ultimate decree =/= the Dark Curse.))

At around the same time, Azkadellia's regime in the O.Z. is coming to an end, because DG showed up and did her "there is still Light in you! hold my hand and we'll banish the evil witch together with the power of SISTERLY LURVE!" thing (no, really, they kill the evil witch by holding hands because it combines their magic or... something). (I prefer to think that Azkadellia realized that the rebels were not only at her doorstep but actually inside her Fortress of Doom, her machine had been compromised, her forces scattered, and that she was in a really, really bad place and that the witch had outlived her usefulness, so to speak, so she took advantage of her sister's naivete and went along with the whole powerless-victim angle in the interest of self preservation). The ruling family is all for forgiveness because the Queen's a total Purity Sue and stuff, but the actual Ozites who've just lived through fifteen years of an enforced-crapsack world don't buy Azkadellia's "I'm such a victim!" excuse, so she takes the remains of her Longcoats and flees into self-imposed exile… in Storybrooke. (Because: Her first choice would be the FTR, as that's the realm she knows best after the O.Z., but she was friendly enough with Regina to know about the Dark Curse and that the FTR's been abandoned/overrun by ogres. The O.Z. has a pretty broad range of options, portal-wise, because of the slippers and the travel storms and whatnot, but Az doesn't know anything about any other realms besides the FTR and the Other Side. Plus, she knows that her ally (Regina) is on the Other Side, and that the main potential threat there (Rumpel) is too scared of her to cause real problems (which, in turn, will almost certainly endear her to Regina even more). So Storybrooke's her safest option.)

Storybrooke is now filled to the brim with evil, vaguely insane women, and all the weirdness that one would expect from such a combination ensues. The Hatter goes out of her way to find Regina, who she knows about from both Jack and Cora; Regina (being… Regina…) is still super bitter about Jack abandoning her to her mother, and about Cora being Cora, and after Hatter tells her (most of) the Wonderland story, she wants absolutely nothing to do with the Hatter because [a] her presence in Storybrooke and Jack's absence means that Jack abandoned her again, [b] there's a good chance the Hatter is actually Cora's spy, and [c] even if she isn't, the fact that she's here and it's obviously possible for Wonderlanders to get to our world via the Rabbit Hole means that Cora could easily come to Storybrooke (she'd also probably pick up on the fact that the Hatter's an evil psychopath, unless the Hatter went out of her way to hide it like she did for Cora). Az, meanwhile, gets on smashingly with the Hatter because they can commiserate over being overshadowed by "better" counterparts (Alice to the Hatter, DG to Az, although with vastly different circumstances) and they're both kind of nuts (the Hatter's canonically suffering from severe mercury poisoning AND complete lack of a conscience ("she has this plan, and to her it's flawless. it just happens to be terrible for everyone else." /paraphrasing); Az has five hundred years' worth of someone else's memories in her head. You'd be crazy, too) so they're more than willing to overlook each other's faults in favor of plotting together and/or terrorizing everyone else. Things get even more messy after Regina gets Henry (~three years after the Hatter and Az show up), because, you know, Regina's uber-protective and neither the Hatter nor Az have much compunction about hurting children (the Hatter kidnaps Chloe basically for funsies; Az murders her own 10-ish-year-old sister for what she later flat-out admits was a childish and petty reason [not that that apology was actually genuine, "next time I snuff out your insignificant little life, there'll be no one standing by to save you" being practically the next words out of her mouth and all, but still...]) and Regina knows that perfectly well. On the other hand, because of the… weird… relationship the Hatter has with Alice (and, through her, Jack and Regina), she's Henry's sort-of aunt and she milks this for all it's worth (Henry's a good way to get power over Regina and she's well aware that Rumpel or Regina are her best bets for getting back to Wonderland. Obv). Eventually she starts threatening to spill the beans about the curse, and Regina has to concede and let her spend time with Henry, who adores her because she projects the same persona she did to win over the Tea Party (i.e. crazy awesome instead of crazy scary). And so on. (I'm toying with the idea of infecting Henry with Wonderland-style madness. 'Cause that would be all kinds of awesome. Though it might interfere with his discovery of the curse, considering Wonderlanders' touch-and-go relationship with time and that Word of God is that's how he noticed something was Not Right in the first place...)

MEANWHILE, Cora abandons Wonderland entirely in favor of getting herself properly established in the remains of the FTR. (At this point, she'd made it back to the FTR just prior to the Dark Curse, courtesy of Hook, but went back to Wonderland after saving her little corner of the FTR for later. Or now, at this point.*) So she goes to the last part of the FTR not overrun by ogres and explains to the refugees the nature of the curse and why Prince Phillip and Mulan can't seem to ever actually leave their little refugee village to rescue Sleeping Beauty even though SB's castle is literally like two days away. The refugees figure she's probably an evil witch because how else would she know something like that? so they throw her in the pit even though she claims not to have any power. In response, she kills Lancelot and steals his body, yada yada. The point is, Cora's doing her thing in New York and in the FTR (as Cora and Lancelot both) and she can't be more than three places at once (why? Rule of Three. She's originally from the FTR after all, it's only proper), so she's left Wonderland to its own devices.

*The implication of that scene seemed to be that Cora, not the Dark Curse, was the one who froze the inhabitants of her little bubble; she blocked the curse out completely, and when she explained it to Hook, her exact words were "you won't even notice, you'll be frozen, like all of those in this corner of the land." None of those statements include herself in the group of frozen people, because she saw no reason to freeze herself when she could be actively plotting her post-curse actions in Wonderland. Cora's not the type to put herself at a disadvantage like that, and she's powerful enough to pull it off. 

The Rabbit Hole collapsed after the Hatter fiasco because Cora's and Jack's use of it without appropriate safety measures (i.e. having a Hare, the White Rabbit for preference, escort them up and down) broke it. The Glassland's in absolute ruins because the Jabberwock has taken over the bottom half of it now that the Hatter's gone. There's no Queen of Hearts, no Hatter, all but a handful of the Chessmen are either long dead or incurably brain-damaged from the Hatter's forays into mind control, the Tweedles are nowhere to be found, El Gato's coming to terms with his lost powers, the Caterpillar's being mysterious, and the only two people who might have been able to regain control of the situation right away are either in a different realm (Jack) or considered incurably untrustworthy (Morris, whose betrayal of the Hatter lead directly to her downfall [although to be fair it would have happened anyway nine times out of ten], but who is still widely known as her Head Minion and therefore unlikely to gain anyone's faith any time soon). So, basically, the place is in a state of complete and utter chaos, and not the usual kind of chaos either. Eventually someone (Kathy Bates!Queen of Hearts, cough cough) decides "Cake it, I'm the Queen of Hearts now" and gathers a group of devoted followers and takes over. She recruits Morris (who's sort of floundering in guilt and related angst post-Hatter*) to repurpose the Looking Glass to point from Wonderland to the Aboveground instead of to the Glassland (using the melted-down-and-turned-into-a-magic-stone Red King's Sword [which becomes the Looking Glass rock thing that powers the new Looking Glass. Obv.]) in exchange for letting him go into the Aboveground to look for the Hatter. She kidnaps a scientist (who happens to be the next intended Alice's father; Wonderland rules will out and all that) and the new Queen brainwashes him into helping her design the casino scheme, and the SyFy version of Wonderland starts to take shape, with old roles being filled in distinctly nastier ways and any hint of rebellion being promptly crushed and/or turned into teaheads. 

*Because I ship them. Prior to the (rather out-of-the-left-field) betrayal, Morris is pretty clearly devoted to her, and, although the Hatter just as clearly doesn't reciprocate and is actually pretty nasty to him sometimes (to be fair, she's sardonically, passive-agressively nasty to everyone, including the Queen of Hearts when she's not being smarmy), he's also the ONE person she shows any sympathy towards whatsoever in the entire show, and they have the some of the most adorable (if evil) banter after the Queen shows up at the Tea Party ("how nice of the queen to drop in on us!" "and how nice it'll be to drop the axe on her!" and "well, call me crazy if you like—" "you're crazy!" "did you like it?" "yes!" and similar). And she sort of… awkwardly picks up one of his dreadlocks and pets it at one point. And their interactions during "A Nice Little Walk" (when they kidnap Chloe) read exactly like an evil date (flirting… dancing… kidnapping your sort-of-niece… you know… the usual…) (which just adds to the creepiness. Gah). So yeah. I ship them. Judge me. JUDGE. ME.

Sometime between Morris leaving Wonderland and the Dark Curse breaking, Morris finds his way to Storybrooke (probably through Jack) and gets into marvelous fights with the Hatter (because he betrayed her and she holds grudges like Regina does) and creeps the heck out of everyone else because that's what Morris does. She'll find out about the new!improved!Looking Glass from him and immediately set about trying to get it to Storybrooke so she can go back to Wonderland (because: when your entire existence happened because of an insane universe and you spend your whole life living in an environment where being crazy is the norm and purposefully going into an occupation that will do its best to kill you with mercury is considered perfectly ordinary, sanity stinks a lot). Emma and Snow get trapped in the FTR realm, Henry's an absolute heinous jerk to Regina [>:(] (unless I make him crazy, in which case he'll just... be crazy...), yada yada, only in the OUaOW version of the story, Regina actually has several options re: getting them back to Storybrooke (the Looking Glass, provided she can get the Hatter to cooperate and point it to the FTR, or one of Az's travel storms) but she's still unwilling to work with David (can you blame her, honestly? he's a useless idiot) so the crisis of conscience is even worse. Et cetera. Eventually the Hatter and Morris make it back to Wonderland, in time to be shocked and appalled at what's happened to the place (they don't care about the suffering of the populace et cetera—but the Queen ruined the tea industry. such things cannot be tolerated). And so on.

…

…And that's… that, really. Not the end, but that's as far as I've gotten in my random-mental-plot-fermentation-process... thing. and MMRRARRRGH it's really bloody long. If anyone actually managed to read this all the way through, you win an Internet cookie. 

And if anyone wants to comment/point out plot holes or inconsistencies/squee happily with me about how awesome Wonderland is/et cetera, you win TWO Internet cookies! 8D #crazyeyes

So.  Many.  Words.  I'm really interested in this, but I don't have enough time to read it now.  I will read it, though.  Scout's honor.

I read this whole thing last night. But I don't really watch TV, so I'm kinda lost.

OK, I totally get two internet cookies because I read through all of it (as promised) and found plot holes/confusing bits.

One question first: do you type all this into the text box on the Chatterbox, or do you type it somewhere else first and cut/paste it?  'Cuz that's a lot of text.

Alright, just agreeing with you on your 'Jefferson never left Wonderland before the curse' thing because the first time he reunites with his daughter is in Storybrooke.

What I'm wondering is what happened with Jefferson if there's Wonderland Hatter?  And how come Jefferson's the only one from Wonderland who was really transtported during the curse?  I'm thinking it's because he's originally from FTR, so he's travelling with the OUaT people, but it's your fanon.

This isn't really a plot hole, but you said something about how Emma and Henry can leave Storybrooke.  I'm pretty sure Emma can't leave because [a] she was originally supposed to be there and she's a 'fairy tale character' and [b] I do believe there was an incident involving her leaving, a wolf, and an almost-car-crash.  I may be wrong, though.

And, lastly, I don't believe Hatter can be sent to Storybrooke unless she shows up before the Dark Curse because Cora isn't supposed to be in Wonderland right before/during the Dark Curse. I bet you explained how this could be and I just ignored it.

That's it. I'm actually really excited for this, even though I only follow OUaT.

@Melody: Well if you ever have a weekend free... :P 

So I actually wrote something today. Mainly because the scene was bugging me and would not go away. Yay!

*

The flat bubbled. It was an unpleasant sound, one which put Zero in mind of boiling mud and which came, as well as he could determine in the dim light, from a large glass tank, perhaps three feet tall and long enough for a reasonably-sized person to lie down in comfortably. Someone had flung a stained tarpaulin over it. He glared at it from his position by the only window and tried to ignore the overpowering smell of putrefaction wafting damply from under the tarp.

The unmistakeable sound of a tall man climbing stairs that had been designed on a far smaller scale came from outside. Zero counted the steps, and nodded, satisfied, at the telltale muffled thud and subsequent curse of a head connecting with a regrettably low pipe at the top of the stairs. He heard the jingle of keys earlier than he’d expected, but the sickly pause when the flat’s owner realized they were unnecessary was right on time.

“Come in, Dr. Frankenstein,” Zero said quietly. 

The door creaked as it opened. 

“Why are you in my flat?” Frankenstein’s voice spoke of too many long nights spent laboring over too many chemical fumes and, perhaps, too many heated arguments with skeptical colleagues.

Zero grinned, ostensibly. It was really more a baring of teeth. “Why do you think?”

Slowly, slowly, Frankenstein stepped over the threshold and let go of the door. It swung shut, hinges squealing their protests. “Corporal Zero, isn’t it? Let’s get this over with quickly.” he said. “I understand you’re not the type for explanations, reasonable though they might be.” 

“Somehow, doctor, I doubt there’s a reasonable explanation for that.” Zero jerked his head towards the tank. “And it’s sergeant, now.”

“That is my brother,” Frankenstein said stiffly.

“All of him, or just bits?”

“It’s a necessary procedure to compensate for natural decomposition.”

“To be sure.” Zero dropped his hand to the holster at his side and drummed his fingers against the grip of his pistol. The floorboards groaned as Frankenstein shifted from foot to foot. “But I’m not here to arrest you. Provided you cooperate, of course.”

“I didn’t know the Tin Men practiced coercion,” Frankenstein said. 

Zero snorted. “They don’t. The Sorceress is offering you a pardon in exchange for your services.”

“Services?”

“She requires your assistance in dealing with certain enemies of the state,” Zero said. “The clever ones, primarily.”

Frankenstein’s lips curled into an ugly sneer. “I prefer to put people back together.”

“And I’d prefer to drag you down to the Tul in chains,” Zero said. “Unlawful possession of a corpse is a very serious crime, doctor. So is murder; I find the two are usually linked.” He glanced pointedly at the tank, which glooped wetly. “It’s your choice.”

Frankenstein stared at him through narrowed eyes. “A full pardon?”

“No questions asked.” Zero could see the wheels turning in Frankenstein’s head as he tried, no doubt, to find evidence of deceit. He smiled lazily. “Time’s precious, doctor.”

“I will not abandon my brother,” Frankenstein said at length. 

“The Sorceress is willing to turn a blind eye to any future experiments, should your skills prove adequate. She is not unreasonable.”

Frankenstein was wavering visibly now. Zero sniffed and tilted his head back to study the maze of pipes criss-crossing the ceiling. Most of them leaked, and they pinged in time with the floorboards as the doctor squirmed. 

“…Very well,” Frankenstein said hoarsely. “I’ll do it.”

Zero smiled. 

*

(Tin Men = Central City police.)

Aaand another, FTR-based this time. 

Angsty Regina is angsty. 

*

Regina brooded. It was something she did often, standing at her balcony with one hand on the cold railing and a glass of untouched wine in the other. She didn’t care much for the taste of wine, but there was something comforting about the feel of the crystal wineglass in her hand. 

The view from her balcony was spectacular. The White Plains spread out before her, cast silver in the light of the full moon and dotted with faint gold light by the lamps of each village. The whole land sloped slowly upwards from the royal palace, like an old-fashioned stage upon which the great dramas of the modern day were played out for her amusement. The comparison had never comforted Regina as much as Mother believed it did.

She swirled the wine with a gentle roll of her wrist and watched it settle again. An icy breeze caught a loose strand of her hair as it passed, brushing against her neck and sending a chill down her spine. The roof of her mouth prickled, a sensation which Regina had grown quite familiar with of late, since Mother had… gone elsewhere. 

The air behind her shifted, almost imperceptibly. A few seconds later the faint smell of rotting leaves and wool grease reached her nose, and Regina tilted her head very slightly to one side. If she focused, she imagined she could hear him breathing.

Her skin crawled.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she said. He didn’t respond, but his boots clicked on the stone tiles as he walked up beside her.  

“Evening, dearie,” he said, when he was close enough that she could feel the faint heat coming off his arms. “A bit chilly to be outside, don’t you think? Wouldn’t want to catch cold.” He giggled to himself, and Regina silently filled in the rest of his sentence: you would not be of any use to me if you did.

It was the first time they had spoken since the… incident. Regina had spent the few days in between planning exactly what she would say to make him understand that she could not, would not continue in this insanity. So she was just as surprised as he was when she said, “How did you meet my mother?”

He was silent for so long that she wondered if she’d managed to offend him. “She had some minor talent for magic,” Rumpelstiltskin said at last, just as Regina was on the point of apologizing. “Her father claimed she could spin straw into gold.” Contempt oozed from his voice, thick as it had been when he’d learnt of Regina’s wild hopes for Daniel. Regina stared straight ahead, over the plains and into the dark mass of the Infinite Forest beyond. “The local earl learnt of it and sent for her.” He giggled again, and said nothing more.

“She couldn’t do it and begged you for help,” Regina whispered.

“Pitiful wishes whispered tearfully into a candle flame,” Rumpelstiltskin said carelessly, and, for the first time in her life, Regina felt a stab of pity for Mother. 

(Perhaps, after all, they were not so different.)

“Three nights she spent in her prison, under threat of execution should she fail. On the third, the earl promised to marry her to his son, who was quite, aha, in love.”

Something about that made Regina’s stomach squirm uncomfortably, though she couldn’t articulate why. “What did she give you in return?”

“A promise, dearie. A year later she gave birth to twins.”

Oh. …Oh.

(Mother had always kept her close, so very close.)

“She started learning magic not long after that.”

Of course she had. Regina closed her eyes, understanding at last while her world shattered like the looking glass. “I have a twin,” she said softly.

“That’s right, dearie. Your very own long-lost brother. Tragic, isn’t it?”

Regina breathed, and breathed, and breathed.

*

Yeah, so, in the original tale of the miller's daughter, she keeps her firstborn by guessing Rumpelstilskin's name. But that's not exactly a viable bargain if everyone knows his name like they do in OUaT, now, is it?

...In other news, it appears that I'm going with the OUaT tradition of handing out ALL the sympathetic backstories. But that's okay, because sympathetic Complete Monsters are the best kind of Complete Monster, amiright? *glances at the Hatter*

One of the major problems I have with Once Upon a Time is that Snow and Davidjames are just... boring. They're both Sues, their relationship has no tension because you know exactly how it's going to end, and neither of them ever change. However, since they're main characters, I fell obligated not to ignore them in what is essentially an AU rewrite with a handful of characters and plotpoints from other shows.

So today I rewrote their introductory scene from the pilot, to figure out where I want to go with their characters.

I'm thinking vaguely axe-crazy!Snow (because the psychosis she displays after drinking Rumpel's anti-love potion had to come from somewhere, even if it was exacerbated by her not being able to feel empathy any more), and farm boy!Davidjames, because he's a farmboy and wouldn't know one end of a sword from the other. Seriously. This necessitates him being less of boring generic knight in shining armor (er, leather?) and more of a guile hero, because he doesn't have any weapons at his disposal except his fists and maybe like a slingshot or something. This in turn has the benefit of making him not an idiot! :D Idealistic farm boy, yes, but not stupid!! And this makes the dynamic between him and Snow truly brains/brawn, with Davidjames being the brains and Snow being the brawn, instead of Snow being both and Davidjames just being like "Duuuurrrr... okay" all the time.

Anyway, here's the scene I wrote:

Once upon a time, a prince galloped through the forest on his white horse, desperate to save the life of the princess he loved. 

The prince was not, strictly speaking, a prince at all, but rather a farm boy who had, through a series of inconvenient events, been forced to impersonate his estranged and now-dead twin brother, who’d been adopted by the royal family at a young age. No one was particularly happy about the situation, least of all the impostor prince.

As for the princess, she was, technically, not a princess either. She had been one, several years ago, until an accusation of murder had forced her to become a fugitive in her own kingdom. Never the type to simply wander around doing nothing, the former princess had taken advantage of her situation to become a highwaywoman—well, she preferred highwayperson—a choice which had not helped the fugitive situation.

The horse really was white, though.

And they were truly in love.

The prince arrived at his destination just in time to learn that his desperate race across the kingdom had been absolutely pointless. He could see that right away, since his beloved had been interred in a coffin of glass for reasons unfathomable, and a funeral procession made up of seven surly dwarfs and one grim-faced werewolf greeted him solemnly. He slid off his horse and staggered, too struck with grief to remember how knees were supposed to work.

“You’re too late,” one of the dwarfs grunted. The prince glared at him.

“It’s never too late,” he said. “There’s one thing we haven’t tried.” Then, feeling foolish, he staggered over to the coffin, opened it up, and very carefully planted a kiss on the dead princess’s cold forehead.

There was a very loud clunk, like two blocks of wood being slammed against one another, and a brief burst of purplish light. The princess opened her eyes as color rushed back into her cheeks. She sat up, and for a moment she and the prince blinked at each other, startled.

“Huh,” the prince said at last. “You know, I always thought that True Love’s Kiss was but a child’s tale.”

“So did I,” the princess said. She swung her legs out of the coffin and stood up, wobbling a little. “…I’m pleased to see that is not the case.” The small assemblage muttered their assent. The princess looked around at them all, smiling. “Hello, everyone.” She paused. “Especially you, James,” she added, and the prince kissed her cheek happily.

The werewolf cleared her throat. “So… Now that Snow isn’t dead… What now?”

Snow raised her eyebrows. “We overthrow my stepmother and James’s stepfather, and then merge the kingdoms into one, of course,” she said.

The dwarf who had greeted James grunted again. “Us and what army?” he said. Snow patted his arm kindly.

“Oh, Grumpy,” she said, “do have a little faith.”