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

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Title: The Outstanding Balance of Morality (revised edition)

Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon A Time. If I did, Adam & Eddy would be fired and picking up litter by the side of the highway.

Summary: There's a new villain in town using old tricks, and when the mysterious thief brings about Storybrooke's latest plot-twist, a lie is discovered and an old enemy re-sworn to revenge unleashes a far worse threat. [Emma/Other (non-romance), Swanfire] (rated M for language)

Genre: Family/Action/Romance/Adventure

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The Outstanding Balance of Morality

"True love, Miss Swan. The only magic powerful enough to transcend realms and break any curse."

- Mr. Gold (1.22 "The Land Without Magic)

"See, the next time your lips touch Emma Swan's, all of her magic will be taken. Everything that makes her special, that makes her powerful, that makes her a threat will be gone."

- Zelena to Hook (3.17 "The Jolly Roger")

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CHAPTER ONE

THE PRICK AND THE PRINCESS

At the prick of the needle, Storybrooke's sheriff cried out in startlement and stumbled a little before yanking free the hypodermic needle, it's old-timey metal plunger pushed in and what remained of the orangey-red liquid dripping onto the floor with a splatter of blood.

Just then David "Prince Charming" Nolan burst into the creepy mad scientist lair followed shortly by deputy Killian "Captain Hook" Jones who wheezed out, "Bloody bastard got away. Transmuted a manhole cover into some sort of portal."

"Is that?" David noticed the needle his daughter was holding while rubbing her backside. And an assortment of more needles filled with familiar liquid scattered on the table and floor around her.

Instead of getting an answer, Storybrooke's (ex?)-savior cried out, dropping the needle as she began to transmutate!

In retrospect, they probably shouldn't have kept Dr. Jekyll's dirty needle after Regina used it - or at least made sure it was destroyed after being used for the purposes of researching an antidote before Dr. Whale decided to also recreate large batches of the original serum... though, to be fair, he did have good intentions for curing things like lycanthropy or allowing mermaids to remain fully human without fancy enchanted jewelry.

Still, given how good intentions always paved a path to Hell - or The Underworld - in Storybrooke, they probably should have cut their losses and known better than to mix magic with fringe science that had previously tried (and sort of succeeded) to raise the dead. Sadly, no one ever seemed to catch on and destroy the roots of the evils that continually and without fail came back to bite them in their asses.

This particular time it was that particular potion and the ass was - literally - that of Sheriff Emma Swan-Jones when in investigating the looting of Whale's lab she lock-picked her way into what used to be Any Given Sundae and then The Three Bears Day Spa (before the Storybrooke health department shut it down for its water temperature being just right for noro virus to thrive in). And while observing former mud baths and Jacuzzis turned into vats of percolating potions found herself propelled backward by the cloaked culprit and in the process a full hypodermic needle not only jabbed its way right through her very tight jeans but in being slammed up against the wall, the plunger had been pushed down, injecting its contents into her, well, ass.

And so it was that Storybrooke's latest victim of magical mayhem shuddered violently and began to glow, another Emma soon materializing with a translucent veiny sparkliness overlaying the original, features contorting and separating in what seemed to be a quite painful experience.

Standing by helpless to stop the transformation, Charming and Hook could only watch as the specter began freeing itself, nearly solidify into a corporeal doppleganger with a Seattle 1990s grunge fashion fetish and glasses that looked more suited to Harry Cary or Mr. Magoo.

Both men drew swords to battle the potentially malevolent bespeckled duplicate, poised and ready to launch an attack and kill the evil Nirvana roadie.

When the glowing and separating subsided, the second Emma did not try to murder the first one or anyone else, however, much to their collective surprise. Instead, she instantly slumped unconscious, followed moments later by the confused original in her red peacoat, lace-trimmed flower-festooned blouse, and highly impractical sockless high healed boots that most certainly resulted in at least one sprained ankle the way she landed as in their competitive haste to catch the princess, Hook and Charming collided like two over zealous outfielders after a fly ball.

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Rumplestiltskin glared at the gaggle of do-gooders that had taken over his shop. The wards he'd once placed around the pawn shop no longer seemed to keep them out after Emma's barrier spell now... what... three or four years ago? no matter that it was long since shattered by Cora and Regina. At least the silent alarm still worked to alert him when her family of trespassing 'heroes' trampled all over his personal property.

And thankfully Belle had taken Gideon home hours ago as he didn't need these morons he was unfortunately related to via his dead first born son waking the one he hoped not to screw up - and to which he tried to keep him away from "The Charmings et al". He'd only attended that stupid belated victory party dinner because Belle had been plagued by a damn fool notion that they were all friends with some mild disagreements in the heat of passion when Rumplestiltskin well knew this lot had no compassion for either of them and only cared when they were barging in here like a ransomeware virus to demand favors for else.

Belle was upgrading the computers at the Library with some... complications from certain associates of the "sheriff's deputy" trampling mud all over the shop whose brains had apparently been less devoured by syphilis but not so little that they didn't trust the pirate to run a fair gambling operation out of an illegally sublet and fire-code-violating attic space. Needless to say, the last thing Rumplestiltskin needed was the herocrites adding to his frustrations.

"What have you lot done now?" Rumplestiltskin growled, tossing his rag in the trash bin and considering poofing the thing later to a closet in one of their residences to burn it to the ground.

"What the bloody hell stinks!?" Hook retorted.

"Other than you, you mean?"

"We don't have time for this," David stepped between the two men. "It turns out Whale replicated Jekyll's serum, someone stole it, and Emma got injected in some sort of booby trap."

Just then Snow, Regina and Henry burst into the shop after receiving a group text just to add to the mayhem, Henry with a, "Mom!... er... Moms?"

"Our hospital thief appears to be an alchemist," Regina deduced. "But I didn't think Emma would have a dark side to pull out. Unless she tracked Lily down without telling anyone to reverse that spell..."

"Just because one has been robbed of their own darkness doesn't mean they can't borrow it from another," Rumplestiltskin scoffed. "You of all people should know that. And savior magic or not, her heart was tested and did not pass with flying colors against Cruella."

"But Hades-" Hook began.

"Was a lying con artist who duped a homicidal rapist into freeing him with 'true loves kiss'," snorted Rumplestiltskin. "In the realms of the gods our rules do not apply, only our gullibility. Never mind that song spell and any additional protections it supplied ran its course some time ago. In any event, magic and nature both abhor imbalance. I'm sure Mrs. Jones picked up enough of it over the years by leeching onto murderers and rapists, such as yourselves," he nodded at Regina and Hook.

Regina flushed while Hook rolled his eyes and snarked, "You always have to be petty, don't you, Crocodile? We're all family here-"

"Family?" scoffed Rumplestiltskin. "Ah, yes, Emma said I was family and that she would fight for me when you tried to murder me in front of my own son and grandson, but since then has chosen to damn me repeatedly, even using my wife as a pawn to blackmail me into her selfish, childish, tantrum of a demand to save your worthless life more than once while demanding I not try to save anyone I love," he scoffed, amending, "I'm sure she picked up enough darkness playing the nice warm scabbard in which to sheath your cutlass. Along with a number of venereal diseases."

"I don't have any diseases! And Emma doesn't think I'm worthless," Hook growled, "and you're hardly a hero with all you've done to us and your so-called true love and second go at fatherhood. You're just jealous that everyone recognized that I'm one of the heroes now and have seen you for the scum you are!"

"Killian! That's not helping!" Snow huffed. "Gold tried to help fix his mother's mess."

"Oh, yes, play nice," Rumplestiltskin scoffed at her, "now when your daughter needs my help. I seem to recall you barging in here as her right-hand thug, threatening to murder my son on rather shaky moral grounds. So you're not helping simply by standing here. Believe me, Belle is the only reason I agreed to attend your little family functions after 'my mother's mess', and even she wasn't in her right mind then."

To Hook, he amended derisively, "And as for you, pirate, jealous? Scum? I think that would be the other way around. The Dark One always brings out the truth in one's blackened heart, and yours was to bitch and moan about your so-called true love being nothing but an anchor holding you down, holding you back from your true self: a villain. I hardly think attempting suicide to get attention is a grand romantic gesture either and you spout about your angsty meeting on a beanstalk adventure as if Miss Swan her companions didn't pull out from the hundreds of people you helped kill and then hid under their corpses after tricking them into thinking you were their friend - but then I'm not part of your little hero family now am I? So I suppose I just don't understand the true definition of 'hero'."

Rumplestiltskin then addressed the rest of Emma's family with an added, "Why would I want to be part of a disgustingly amoral family of self-righteous, hypocritical idiots? You can't stomach owning up to your darkness, any of you, that you love it, that it makes you stronger, that other people fearing you gives you power. Because they certainly don't respect you, not the joke you all are, playing the reformed mayor and the buddy cops and whatever it is," he waved a hand at Snow White, "you think you're actually instilling in those school children that help them be anything more than mouth-breathing breeders of another generation of ignorant, superstitious arseholes. You rip out your darkness or beat up some slob in a dark ally where no one can see what you've done and pretend it was their fault so you can keep pretending in the light of day that you're so special."

Poking the unconscious Sheriff with his cane, Gold said, "I don't envy any of you. I pity you and how pathetic you are that you actually think this woman is a hero, your victorious savior when she's nothing but a spoiled brat teenager in the body of a grown woman who treats justice like it's a suggestion does more shagging in the Sheriff's Station than paperwork. And all of you are the eternal exception to the very rules you spout ad nauseum, allowed to screw over everyone else in this town and be praised for cleaning up your shite... or even having other people, such as myself, do it for you while you wander around with your heads up your arses.

"Well, I'm not one of your sheep, Charming," he told the Prince. "And I owe your family nothing when you did nothing for mine. Emma Swan may have birthed a child by my firstborn son and stood as my ally once upon a time, but that woman ceased to exist, replaced by Mrs. Jones here who beat my second son bloody and threatened to murder him in front of me and his mother for the high crime of giving her lover a perfectly safe and happy time-out. Whatever The Land Without Magic made her, she was a far better person than after you got your self-righteous nonsense into her head and helped turn her into a selfish, cruel little princess. This isn't the woman my son loved, that he sacrificed his life for. As far as I'm concerned, she's long dead as well. So I owe this woman nothing.

"In other words," he sneered, "all of you kindly get the fuck out of my shop."

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After getting the fuck out of Gold's pawn shop, everyone gathered at Storybrooke General where Dr. Whale had been their next best hope to understanding Jekyll's (possibly augmented) serum and why neither Emma nor her magically manifested doppleganger would wake up, no matter how many times Hook stuck his tongue down the former's throat after Henry's failed forehead smooch or Regina zapped the bespeckled Emma with bolts of magic until her flannel dress began to smoke.

Henry had even tried to find answers in the original book that was finished now after his magic quill refused to pen anything in the new one to clarify what was going on beyond the point of the splitting serum taking effect... so the fifteen year old had now resigned himself to playing Pokemon GO in the waiting room.

Probably, Henry should have been more concerned about his mother being duplicated and mysteriously unconscious, but it wasn'tlike he hadn't seen one of his mothers doubled before. He'd had so much crazy shit go down in his short life that he honestly couldn't muster the emotional investment between bullshit school work, bullshit Author writing, trying to have a bullshit social life with his recently not-that-interested girlfriend, and bullshit hanging out with his grandpa and step-grandfather/step-dad in their perpetual frenemy bromance of trying to one-up each other in being the most dashing and important man in his birth mom's life.

It was really no contest at this point, which made David's enthusiasm kind of pathetic in Henry's opinion. Obviously, he should have been Number One as Emma's son, but he had been out of the running since he was like twelve and after putting up what he admitted was a weak-ass fight, he'd resigned himself to having only one mother who put him first in her life and pretending to be supportive of her and get along with Killian while wishing he wasn't too good of a person to let the guy die in some convenient accident. He'd had that chance on that Nautilus and fucked it because he couldn't break his mom's heart... even if he thought she was better off and a better person without the pirate in her life. I mean, all you had to do was look at her laying next to her and the glasses-wearing douplicate who could have been her a couple years ago and she looked like a prematurely aged drug addict. It was sad.

His family was fucked up, Henry decided as he captured a Charmeleon from David's lap and Hook's patience, what minuscule amount he actual had, ran out.

"This is madness!" the pirate growled at Nurse Ratched behind the counter as Henry was trying to grab a Rattata from his chest hair. "I demand to see Emma."

"Which one?" the nurse asked, tone utterly bored and unfazed by the pirate's anger.

"The real one, you bint! My wife. You bloody well know which one I mean!"

A nun passed by with a cart of flowers and Henry snatched a Vileplume, wondering not for the first time if those pink flowers from Camelot were also evil.

"I'll page Dr. Whale and see if he has an update," Ratched blandly responded but made no move to actually do that.

"Grrrrrrrrrr! Who were you in your other life!?" Hook demanded.

"That's for me to know and you to hope you never find out," she quipped. "Now sit your faux leather-clad pretty yet otherwise completely useless butt down and wait before I have security escort you out, Mr. Jones."

"That's Deputy or Captian Jones to you! I wouldn't be caught dead in faux leather! And you can't tell me what to do! I am the law in this town, woman!"

"I only recognize law enforcement who have undergone state-mandated training and are licensed to carry a fire arm, never mind drive a car," Ratched responded snootily while flipping through forms. "And since the only one here, corrupt as she may be, is unconscious or dead while you are just an excersize in unapologetic nepotism who spends his time diddling the Sheriff's while she gets her family and fangirls out of parking tickets, I reserve my right to call your bullshit, Deputy Captain Chlamydia, and issue my own psychiatric hold on all of you."

"Wha-I don't-I've never hadChlamydia! You take that back!" Hook insisted.

"It says right here that you did," Ratched gestured to a chart. "When you were admitted after that car accident, you had significant seepage."

"SHUT UP, YOU BINT!"

"Gross," Henry groaned while everyone else looked disgusted.

"Which is the only reason," drawled Ratched at the teen, "that I didn't whack your bony backside for stealing those condoms from the clinic last week. Between this walking petrii dish as a role model, your lazy-ass birth mother who can't be bothered to get her lovers checked out before spreading her legs, your judgmentally questionable adoptive mother who banged a forest vagrant in a crypt covered in mold and rotting-corpse-seepage polluted ground water, your grandfather who had an extramarital affair under cursed amnesia and wasn't using condoms given his fake wife thinking she was pregnant while his previously prude of a mistress was skipping in here to get the strongest dose birth control pills available - which she stopped taking to have a do-over after failing with the first kid and to start her creepy-as-fuck-and-insulting-to-modern-feminists-everywhere Overly Fertile Princesses Club that celebrates the cliché happy ending of a submissive little twit with a tiara and a baby-stretched vag, and your other grandfather having to get tested for forest diseases acquired from your adoptive mother's better dressed half, it was a relief that you even remotely understand safe sex."

"Hey, don't talk about my daughter that way!" Snow exclaimed. "Or my vagina!"

"I do not have any forest diseases!" Regina growled and then glared at Henry, "You stole condoms!?"

"I just want to be prepared like she said!" Henry defended. "I don't want to get a bunch of venereal diseases like Emma - and apparently you! Or have a kid when I'm still a kid! Violet would join that creepy Overly Fertile Princesses Club and I'd have to go to all those stupid dinner parties with those stupid princesses and their stupid princes. Seriously, like ninety percent of them must have eaten lead paint chips as kids or something!"

"We're not creepy and they're not dumb!" Snow harumped, which received a snort from Hook, an eye-roll from Regina, and David suddenly deciding to join the previous conversation.

"Did you say Emma has VD? As in-"

"Her vagina has seen more swabbing than the deck of the Jolly Roger," snarked Nurse Ratched.

"But... but..." Snow stammered.

"How can you possibly be surprised?" snorted Regina. "Besides just looking at what she's bedding, you never looked in her medicine cabinet?"

"I... I thought that was cold sore medicine."

"I can't believe you!" David growled at the pirate. "You gave my daughter your whore diseases!"

"It's not my fault, mate!" Hook huffed. "I finished the whole bloody bottle of pills Whale gave me even after Pan tossed us back to The Enchanted Forest when I pledged myself to celibacy until I could be reunited with my one true love. How was I to know I had some resistant strains?"

"That's why you get your junk tested again before even touching my daughter, son... in-law that isn't going to help your ass from getting pounded!" David snapped, throwing Hook up against a wall and removing his gun from his holster.

Snow sighed. "David, please, you can pistol whip him with his own weapon later in the parking lot."

"What!? Hey!" Hook huffed. "This isn't my fault! Emma knows it! She wouldn't have agreed to be my wife otherwise. She knows my love for her is pure even if my loins have plundered many an unclean-"

"Spare me the nauseating fake romance, you diseased manwhore," Regina cut him off, "and sit your unclean ass down before your dick falling off from the slutty barmaids you plundered in between drunk raping and infecting innocent damsels who popped out generations of congenital syphilis mental defectives is the least of your concerns," she snapped.

"I have not-"

"Please, during one of your blackout drunk stupors I bled you all over a map just to make sure Henry never touches one of your bastard decedents."

Unnerved, Hook sat down and demanded, "You didn't... tell Emma... did you?"

"About how many imbecile stepchildren and grandchildren and great-grandchildren she has running around this town thanks to your wandering dick over the past three hundred years? If she can't figure that out on her own, frankly, she deserves you."

"I thought you were Emma's friend," muttered Snow.

Regina snorted and told her, "I was the Evil Queen. If I didn't consider the two of you friends, I wouldn't have any. I mean, honestly, I let my lover's rapist who murdered my son's father move in with me, I was so desperate for companionship and then appointed her Henry's in-case-of-emergency guardian because Zelena is, sadly, more present as a parent than any of you and the only one here who doesn't think Henry should find true love by tripping at prom and seeing if whatever hole his dick falls into makes a baby. As shady a that nurse is, she's not wrong about that.

"And as pathetic as that is, that you're happy to be friends with former mass murderers who tried to kill your family and did kill your fathers, I suppose I am more pathetic for having to settle for a family with critical thinking skills that make that beginning and end of Flowers For Algernon seem happy in comparison. But I did horrible things. This is my punishment. Far worse than being stuck in a dungeon, of that I can assure you."

Snow and David scowled and Hook glared at Regina before taking a seat next to Henry, closer than any normal person would, and patted him on the back.

"Don't worry, lad, whatever happens, you've still got me. I might not have formally adopted you yet, but I consider you as good as a son of my own currently very clean lions no matter what your other mum says and I'll look after you right and proper."

Henry rolled his eyes and sarcastically (not that Hook noticed) responded, "Great, thanks. That means a lot."

Everyone else lapsed into boredom and throwing nasty looks at Nurse Ratched for several minutes, until...

Dr. Whale returned to the waiting room suddenly and declared, "Congratulations, it's twins!"

"Funny," sighed Regina.

David jumped to his feet. "How is Emma? Is she awake yet? Do you know if anything was done to the potion? Is her duplicate dangerous? Can they be reemerged? Can we-"

"Why didn't my true love's kiss awaken her?" Hook butted in. "It must be a poison rather than curse then, yes? Because true love is the rarest and most powerful-"

"Bullshit of all. Yes I know," groaned Whale. "You all are so delusional basing your entire philosophy on a concept that's the equivalent of a Tinder hook-up between a sexual predator and slutty teenager. True love means absolutely nothing if it's entirely based on belief and feeling something to be true. I've heard less bullshit feeling-based policies from than son of an orangutan who thinks he's the best at everything when he's really just a hypocritical loser."

"He seems like a fine chap to me," said Hook.

"You mean you actually watch more than old pirate movies and pirate-movie-based porn?" scoffed Regina.

Whale continued, "Anyway, Emma is fine. She is awake. The serum was slightly modified but presents no danger to her or her sister's health."

"I'm sorry," Regina cut in, "what? Her sister?"

"That's right. Her identical twin sister," Whale said.

"WHAT!?" gasped everyone.

"It does explain why the replacement Emma suffered a rather swift decline in physical appearance so they frankly would probably be mistake for siblings a good several years apart than twins. I was always surprised when her bloodwork and urinalysis didn't come back positive for drug use. All the stress, pill popping wouldn't have surprised me.

"Anyway, I've surmised the impetus was Zelena's magic-siphoning kiss curse that caused the Freaky Friday type situation... although in the same body, so... that's not really an accurate description is it? Being Jon Malcovich perhaps?"

"Wait... what do you mean?" Regina demanded. "There were always two of them?"

"We have... two daughters?" croaked out Snow and Charming.

Giving the pair a look that didn't say much for his thoughts on their intelligence, Whale confirmed, "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Two babies who shared one physical body thanks to magic: Emma who has left over magical savior induced powers and seems to be the one you physically gave birth to and came to Storybrooke and broke the Curse. And the one you've been calling Emma for the past few years but never got a baby blanket of her own, the one who screwed up your meet-cute in the past and used that magic mostly to benefit herself in between sessions with Archie to rant about being the Savior interfering with her pirate-smooching time, which was the rest of the time in the back booth at Granny's. I had to put out a public health warning about that booth lest someone get herpes from the condiment bottles. Or syphilis. Or gonorrhea... not to mention crabs, and not the kind that make a good deep fried sandwich with a side of slaw."

"I hate this bloody hospital!" Hook growled.

"But how," Snow asked, "I mean... I never knew... I was really carrying twins?"

"It had to be the spell The Apprentice cast on Embryo Emma to remove her darkness," stated Whale. "It's the only thing that explains the unusual absorption rather than, well, the usual outcome given the hereditary condition known as Evil Twin Syndrome."

"I'm sorry," Regina cut in, "but did you say 'Evil Twin Syndrome'?"

"Yes, that's right. Emma's sister, let's call her 'Bella'."

"Bella?" asked Hook, brows furrowed.

"Yes, you know, Bella Swan. Twilight?" Whale stated to blank stares. "Emma and her sister are like... Harry Potter and Twilight," he explained. "As the great Maine philosopher Stephen King said, 'one is about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity. The other is all about the importance of having a boyfriend.' Emma is The Savior. Bella is a skank obsessed with her centuries old yet unnatural youthful, pale, leather-clad, emotionally-and-physically-isolating-from-her-family-and-also-undead boyfriend. Throw in some blood sucking and a not-gay werewolf and you two," he scoffed at Hook, "are a real life rip-off of that nauseating teen romance played by a syphilitic pirate and a thirty something woman acting like a dumb, slutty teenager. Which, from what I have read, is one of the hallmarks of Evil Twin Syndrome. Sexual promiscuity compounded by adolescent, narcissistic behavior."

"Hold on," interjected David. "If Emma has an 'Evil Twin' does that mean-"

"Your brother was one? Obviously," nodded Whale. "He was hereditarily predisposed toward evil behavior due to a blood magic curse upon your family known as 'Imago tenebrarum', which roughly translates to 'Mirror of Darkness' but I don't care for that magic bullshit so I am going with 'Evil Twin Syndrome'. You can thank Belle - the bookworm not Bella Swan the skank savior - for finding out the history. Or not. I understand you all mostly ignore her, which is probably why her brain tumor caused mental disorder went undiagnosed for years.

"But, anyway," Whale continued, "as I was saying, when Mommy Snow got preggers and had a shady sorcerer pull out not-even-a-fetus-yet Emma's dark potential without realizing her precious little zygote carried a curse from her daddy that caused her to split in two... well..." Whale smashed his hands back together.

"Of course," groaned Regina. "Like Gold said: magic abhors imbalance. That curse took away Emma's natural predisposition to make her own selfish choices - her darkness - which was also the equivalent of having too much goodness. I assumed she found balance in life by associating with criminals, and I suppose that was part of it, but the other half came from her sister."

"Yes, exactly," nodded Whale. "Lacking in darkness, Emma's magic absorbed her sister into herself to try and restore as much balance to her magic as possible, which effectively also gave her more than the natural amount of light potential, although not as much as it would with regular twins since her sister is, after all, an Evil Twin, who clearly took advantage of Zelena's magic-sucking spell to switch dominance and hijack her sister's magical ability, go back in time, switch things up to what certainly seems to be her benefit. Quite clever, really, though it would seem also subconscious, so driven her curse perhaps.

"Dr. Hopper is working on figuring that out," Whale explained, "and sorting through their memories which seem somewhat different and divergent at points. So perhaps the splintered timeline is related. Somehow Emma retained memories of the original timeline's past without acquiring the altered memories as her sister did upon returning to the present but yet does have most of her sister's memories created after that event, if not as clear and lacking in the emotional connection. She retained them but is fully aware that they are not her memories aside from rare, usually magic and savior-related incidents when it seems she had momentary control or what seems a shared control based on a common goal.

"Hopper posited a rather interesting theory that Henry was able to wake Emma with true love's kiss because the body that got stabbed was actually her skanky not savior sister's and their hearts were probably merged in some way so... anyway, on the matter of memories prior to Zelena's spell," Whale concluded, "things are bit more complicated for Bella who had no separate identity of her own for the first three decades of her life. But I'm sure a few years of therapy sessions can sort it all out for both of them."

"Wonderful. Two Emmas. Just what I need," sighed Regina.

"That's what Hopper said," snorted Whale. "Look on the bright side? You've gotten back an Emma whose life isn't entirely monopolized by a self-centered alcoholic with neurosyphilis-related brain damage but retained the one whose life is entirely monopolized by a self-centered alcoholic with neurosyphilis-related brain damage to keep Deputy Dildo from reverting to his mass murdery rapey ways-"

"Oi, doctor-patient confidentiality!" Hook growled.

"Yes, well," shrugged Whale, "you treat your police code more like guidelines, so I've decided to do the same. And now that I think about it, since Bella doesn't have any of her sister's goodness, you two might turn into Natural Born Killers. And yes, I need to get out more instead of spending my nights chilling alone with Netflix.

"As for the rest of you, honestly, how did you not think anything was wrong?" Whale demanded of the family. "I've been testing this woman's blood for syphilis and other degenerative diseases and coming up with concussion-related excuses for brain scans for years to find a medical explanation for her change in appearance and personality. Maybe I should order MRIs for all of you as soon as the new machine is installed! You might have irreversible brain damage that's hampering your reasoning ability."

"Yes, yes, Snow has suffered more head injuries than an NFL player," Regina drawled, "tell us something we don't know. Get back to this Evil Twin thing. I thought the Good Twins never survived? So how the hell is Charming here let alone Emma?"

"It gives new meaning to 'Vanishing Twin Syndrome' for sure," confirmed Whale. "Unchecked the curse consumes the Good Twin in the same way as rarely in nature a fraternal twin will fuse with its brother or sister early in embryonic development such that a few of those cells with remain present as, say, a kidney or even blood cells that will lead to confusing DNA results. Of course, from what I read, people have been trying various remedies for centuries including attempts at accelerating the pregnancy, which seems only to accomplish giving birth to one healthy evil baby and one dead not evil one instead of just the evil baby. We're still trying to figure out how that was avoided in the case of David's family."

"That gypsy charm!" Snow remembered. "Your mother gave it to me as she was dying. She said it was just supposed to tell the sex of our first born. I wore it the entire time I was pregnant. It's... odd really, now that I think about it I just felt... compelled to put it on the day before we went to find the Tree of Wisdom."

"Why wouldn't my mother have ever said anything?" David demanded, confused.

"Because all parents in the Enchanted Forest are stupid, selfish assholes?" answered Whale matter-of-factly. "We'll assume then that this 'gypsy charm' is the reason David survived and perhaps combined with that spell you two had cast allowed both of your daughters to coexist in one physical form with Emma being the dominant twin and her sister being a Parasitic Twin case, but instead of additional physical features it presented in occasionally erratic behavior. You might say they battled for dominance like Spock's Vulcan and Human side, but the Savior magic kept Emma on the Human side for the majority of her life."

"Aren't Vulcans the more logical, though?" asked Henry.

"Well, if you truly follow Star Trek mythology through to the prequel series," Whale countered, "Vulcans are actually paranoid assholes who care a lot more about spying on and painting themselves as superior to other alien races than they then do about logic and religion. They just used that Surak fellow and his reformation as the perfect cover to seem like alien Buddhists.

"And, yes," the doctor sighed, "again I realize knowing all of that as well as anything about Twilight reveals that I am a loser with no social life, but that's all your faults for trapping me in a world I hate full of people from other worlds that I hate. So there!"

Whale paused to think, the asked, "Where was I?"

"Explaining Emma's dual nature," said Regina, sounding a bit bored already.

"Ah, yes," Whale nodded. "Also, Evil Twins, like Vulcans, don't process alcohol well. So, Bella chumming around with a barely functional alcoholic when her sister was already - perhaps on Bella's influence - prone toward drinking when emotional due to possible hereditary alcoholism didn't help curb her sociopathic tendencies."

"Hey! I am fully functional!' argued Hook. "In all ways!'

"Gross," groaned Henry.

"Emma is an alcoholic?" sputtered Snow.

Crossing her arms, Regina gave the younger woman a 'seriously' look and stated, "Exactly what were you doing every time we met at your apartment and she had her personal walking liquor store pour out his flask into her cup of coffee - the coffee she poured into it after pouring your hot chocolate 'with cinnamon' down the sink - or we met at her place and she was just straight up day drinking hard liquor?"

"I...I... why didn't you say anything!?" Snow croaked out, distraught. "She said they were switching to water!"

Regina shrugged. "All alcoholics say that. It was blatantly obvious and not my business. I probably drink three too many glasses of wine a day to deal with you."

"More than one is too many," Whale told her.

"See?"

"She was really pouring out my hot cocoa?" Snow sniffed. "But she loved that. We bonded over that."

"Well, you and your firstborn bonded over it," shrugged Whale. "You and your second born bonded over Cuban coffee and lies."

Snow gave Regina an accusing look.

"What? Was that supposed to be a big flashing sign that Emma was body-snatched?" the former Evil Queen grumbled "I just thought Emma was only pretending to like the stuff for Henry's benefit when she first got here and didn't know how to break it to you all that she hates the stuff and probably told him when they were living together in New York so it was old news and if you cared you'd ask her and if I said anything you'd snark at me to mind my own business. It's not like I lived with her for five months or anything."

Snow scowled.

"Okay, so let me get this straight," Henry interjected, "Emma was in charge until Zelena took her magic so Bella took over control, which mean's Hook's arm candy who's been criminally neglecting me since my uncle's coronation is actually my aunt?"

"Exactly," Whale nodded.

Hook frowned as it only then occurred, "So... the lad's not my stepson?"

"Not unless his actual mother wants to marry you and polygamy is legal here," said Whale. "This is clear grounds for an annulment.. even if it's not on paper since you married the woman who wanted to marry you, just under an identity that wasn't her own.. which... actually... that might also make the marriage fraudulent. You might want to check with Mr. K on that and see if you have to file a new marriage license after Hopper certifies that your maybe-not-wife is of sound mind. Also, she doesn't seem as keen on the name 'Emma' now, so you might also want to wait until she's figured that out as it'd be rather odd in the wedding video calling her 'Emma' in your vows when she wants to change her name to 'Eustance' or something. But as to your questions, the answer to both is hard 'no'."

Henry jumped up and threw a fist in the air, then told Hook, "You're not as big of a dick as you used to be, but honestly, calling you 'Dad' makes my balls crawl up inside my body."

Hook harumphed and crossed his arms while responding, "Yes, well, I never wanted to be your step dad, you big-nosed nerdy bookworm brat with an unnatural scarf fetish."

"At least my dick doesn't seep puss, Killian!" Henry retorted. "And for your information, the only reason I acted so thrilled about 'Operation Best Man' was so I could curse your rings!"

"Wait... what?" Hook sputtered. "What did you do to them!?"

"Not sure. I took a memory potion after!" Henry taunted.

"Henry," Regina scolded. "That is awful. Hilarious and no doubt appropriate. But still, very wrong."

Hook flipped them both off.

"David, this is all our fault," Snow moaned. "We were going to have twins! That's what those visions meant! We caused this!"

"Yep, all your fault," nodded Whale, "but also, if it makes you feel better being subverted by her sister for thirty years, Bella Eustance Skanky Swan wasn't able to hone her psychotic tendencies to their full capacity at puberty with the hormone changes that alter brain chemistry and had to settle for a delayed and rather pathetic attempt at evil puberty even with the help of the Dark One. As such, she is less of an 'Evil Twin' at this point as she is just a selfish jerk with a sex and rum addiction. Really,, you lucked out with your selfish, bad parenting decision and it turned out for the best, probably. I mean, on the other hand, Bella could have turned out like Zelena. She's one of the worst cases of Evil Twin I have ever seen."

"Zelena is an Evil Twin? You never thought to mention that before!?" Regina growled.

"Doctor-patient confidentiality?" shrugged Whale. "It's through her father's line. And honestly, I hate all of you and dealing with your bullshit. Knowing that green freak has a hereditary magical emotional disorder would have made you fawn over her and excuse away all of her horrible crimes with even more self-righteously misguided passion. I mean, I'm a fucking necromancer, and I think you lot are a bunch of morally bankrupt assholes."

The Doctor picked at a hangnail and continued, "As I was about to say before that rude interruption, Zelena is an Evil Twin. She killed the child Cora was supposed to have in the womb. Her child subsequently killed its twin in her womb. It was stillborn, only partially developed with the accelerated pregnancy."

"I have no memory of that. I was there," Regina stated.

"The Blue Fairy knocked you all out and altered your memories after determining which one was the Evil Twin, and sadly it is Robin. So, congratulations," he told Regina, "you have an evil niece doomed to grow up to be a mentally unstable, homicidal bitch that given your mother's non-magical mental instability already has the brain scan of a serial killer."

"What... what about Henry?" asked Snow. "Is he...?"

"No, thankfully," Whale waved her off. "Apparently, Henry could not have this 'Heart of the Truest Believer' business and be an Evil Twin. Their hearts are blackened before birth, after all. The Blue Fairy had already determined that due to his conception in a world of limited and different magic, the curse could not sustain itself beyond the initial twinning. Since the curse kicks into baby-killing mode only once the embryos have functional hearts, Henry's twin never developed to that stage either as a failing of magic to continue its development or a failing of magic to protect it against regular physiological issues that cause pre-fetal miscarriage of a pregnancy or possibly some confusion of the curse by Emma's sister being joined with, so if she was already 'carrying' an Evil Twin the new one was disposed of.

"Whatever the reason, a magical analysis confirms the blood curse has run its course for Emma and was not passed on to Henry so neither has to worry about evil offspring. Which is not the case for Bella, so it's a good thing the pirate has been shooting blanks."

"WHAT!? That's not true!"

Henry snorted and Hook looked at his ring, then snarled, "Why you little-"

Before he could strangle Henry in Homer Simpson style, Regina stepped between them and addressed Whale, "You are treading on dangerous ground with your insubordination and frankly insulting manner over a very delicate family matter."

"What are you going to do? Put me in an orange jumpsuit and make me pick up trash at your next family picnic?" Whale scoffed. "I'm the only real doctor in this town. I've been wronged by a lot of you. You're lucky I don't raise all the dead you people have wronged and let them rip your arms off.

"Which reminds me," Whale told her, "you should make an appointment to check your hormone levels and see if any adjustments should be made to your next shot. Just because having ruined ovaries due to magic has kept you youthful long after most women would be suffering through menopause and turning into ugly old crones, doesn't mean you shouldn't keep on top of things."

"You really give less of a shit about doctor-patient confidentiality than Hopper, don't you?" Regina snarled.

"Not a bit. Prince Charming had a third nipple removed, Snow White really should think about bleaching her Wookie ass situation that makes her annual vaginal exams highly unpleasant, and from my examination of the Lost Boys, it seems likely that your son's unnatural pixie-dust-accelerated puberty has stunted his penis size."

"Awe, that's a shame, lad!" tittered Hook. "Already not having much to work with, I'd imagine."

"Actually," said Whale, "Henry's paternal line is predisposed to being above average. His father, even with his own presumed pixie-dust-accelerated puberty, was well endowed enough not to be embarrassed. Rather a shame, though. Both could have had award-winning careers as a porn actor and banged more ladies than you. Still a chance for Gideon, at least. Now Henry will still suffer the usual white male embarrassment in the locker room. Actually, this town is so ethnically un-diverse that he probably has a better chance of being struck by lightning than standing pantless next to a black penis, so-"

"Stop talking about my penis!" moaned Henry.

"It's all right, Henry," David reassured him. "Size really doesn't matter."

Regina, Snow, and Nurse Ratched snorted.

"Aaaaaaaaaaanyway," Whale continued, "where was I? Oh, right, I kept Robin's malformed Good Twin in a jar in my office. If you'd like to see-"

"NO!" everyone exclaimed, horrified and disgusted.

Shrugging again, not remotely bothered by the offended looks, Whale scoffed, "Your loss. It's pretty cool."

"Can we see our... daughters?" asked Snow.

"Sure, why not? Just be aware that Bella will be even less inhibited. Try to encourage good behavior with rewards, like you would be a bad-tempered dog. But by 'rewards' I don't mean make-out time with Captain Douchebag here as that clearly leads to bad decisions like covering up cold-blooded, racist homicide."

"I was cursed! And I am not racist!" Hook exclaimed. "I may be a lot of horrible things, but I am not racist. My not caring that I offered that wizard has nothing to do with race. I generally don't care about any of the wankers I've bumped off unless I want to marry one of their relations."

"Lovely," sighed Regina.

"Like you care," argued Hook.

"I care," glared David.

"None of you care," Whale told them. "Those two sociopaths. And you're a pussy-wipped fake prince who had to learn from a dimwitted little girl how to use a sword and lets a grown man who murdered his father call him 'Daddy'. My badly resurrected brother who killed our father had a better sense of wrong and right than you three sanctimonious shits and the rest of your family... save Gold, obviously. He buys me shiny new toys to thank me for my medical contributions to the well-being of his family while you just come in making demands of 'Dr. Whale help me have this baby because I forgot to make a new home birth plan without the psychotic witch trying to kill my baby so I had to leave the only place she couldn't kill me to a completely unguarded building filled with hundreds of innocent men, women, and children'. Fuck all of you.

"Now, as I was saying," continued Whale, "Be aware that one of your daughters is a psychological mess after being freed of her sister's skank-o-rama freedom tour and the other is a selfish, amoral slut who only suffered even the slightest moral crisis because of her sister and is otherwise incapable of properly experiencing empathy due to her affliction which is essentially entirely your fault for not getting tested for MTDs - magically transmitted diseases - before doing the self-righteous heroes with two backs."

Whale then dropped his stethoscope like a microphone, declared, "Whale out!" and strode off down the hall.

"He's gotten bloody weird since bleaching his hair," muttered Hook.

"At least it's all his," snarked Henry. "I know you keep your magic rogain shit behind Aunt Skanky's herpes meds. Bet that's the sperm-reducing stuff Whale is prescribing you!"

"Don't call your aunt 'Skanky'," Snow snapped at Henry while David gave Hook a two-fingered eye threat.

"Parking lot, mate."

AN: The title is taken from the words of immunologist Peter Medawar who wrote about a particular case of human chimerism in The Uniqueness of the Individual, "There is no telling how long Mrs. McK will remain a chimera, but she has now been so for twenty-eight years; probably, in the long run her twin brother's red blood cells will slowly disappear, and so pay back the still outstanding balance of his mortality." He was writing about a woman who had absorbed her twin early in their gestation and so still had his tissue in her body. Chimerism is rare, but it does happen.

AN2:: Even though Rumple and Belle attended the weird Last Supper dinner in the finale, I don't see Rumple having gone of his own volition. The mention of Belle's brain tumor will be explored in more detail much later in the story as it applies to her odd behavior in Season 6 especially and relates to a revelation about her mother's death and her amnesia. Once Belle's brain tumor was removed she returned to her more logical and loving self who was also more skeptical of The Charmings and did not generally interact with them socially given their blatant disregard early on for her safety and agency and ignoring of justice, something that means a great deal to Belle, as it did (and will) to the real Emma Swan as she tries to resume her life after its hijacking and being driven off a cliff by her sister.

AN3: I started this story when PokemonGO was the new craze. A description of the Rattata says: "It is not picky about where it lives—it will make its nest anywhere." While the Vileplume's "toxic pollen triggers atrocious allergy attacks. That's why it is advisable never to approach any attractive flowers in a jungle, however pretty they may be." Lastly, MTDs = magically transmitted diseases. Duh!

AN4: As for Whale's geeking out on Twilight, I only ever saw some of the first movie when it was on HBO and turned it off because it was so very very very bad. Someone posted King's quote about Twilight and Harry Potter on Twitter and I had to use it.

Next up: Breaking the news to Savior Swan and Skanky Swan. (And No, Belle is not going to go by that name. or Eustance)