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unfolded73 · 7 years ago

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What Comes Next (4/8)

Summary: They lived happily ever after. And then what happened? (A Post-S6 story.) Starts about a week after the final battle, and explores the highs and lows of newly married life between Emma and Killian as they deal with work, friends, and family as life in Storybrooke settles down somewhat.

Captain Swan, Explicit overall, ~4200 words this chapter

Thanks to @j-philly-b for the beta.

CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 | CHAPTER 3

Killian paced the across the floor, glancing at the clock again. He stopped, straightening a picture on the wall, then turned and paced some more. Checked the time again. Shifted one of the heavy candlesticks on the mantle over an inch. Looked at the clock. Paced.

Finally the front door to the house opened, and Henry walked in.

“Oh hey, Killian. I figured you’d still be at work.”

Killian hooked his thumb behind his belt buckle. “I’m going to patrol tonight to see if I can catch these thieves that have been giving us so much trouble, so I took the afternoon off.” He gestured with his hook. “Have a seat, Henry.”

Henry dropped his backpack on the floor. “Why?”

“Just sit down.”

Eyeing him suspiciously, Henry sat on the sofa.

“Did I not hear you tell your mother two nights ago that you were rewriting a paper on which you had gotten, I presume, an unsatisfactory grade?” Killian asked him.

Henry began to look nervous. “Yeah.”

“Then why, pray tell, did I answer a call at the sheriff’s station this morning from your English teacher, calling to inform Emma that you had not turned in three assignments, including this supposedly rewritten paper?”

Henry sat silently, a war between panic and sullenness taking place on his face.

“She said you are barely scraping by with a ‘C’ in the class, which I gather is bad. So I need to know what’s going on with your schoolwork, lad.”

Henry narrowed his eyes. “Why did you talk to my teacher?”

“Because your mother was busy when she called, and I figured it was one thing I could spare Emma having to worry about, if I spoke to the teacher in her stead.” Killian sat down on the chair across from Henry. “And as I am your stepfather, Mrs. Ritchie was happy to discuss it with me.”

Sullen won the war for Henry’s facial expression, and he sat back against the sofa cushions. “I just didn’t have time to turn it in. She didn’t give me enough time.”

“I’ve seen you on the XBox and on your phone the last two nights, and you expect me to believe that you didn’t have time?” Henry just rolled his eyes at that, not answering. “Try again, lad.”

“I’ve got a lot going on,” he mumbled.

Killian sighed, giving up on getting a satisfactory explanation from Henry on the reason he’d been shirking his schoolwork. He stood up again. “Now, I realize there are only a few weeks left before the end of the school year, but I’m sure if we eliminate some distractions, you can bring your grades up. For starters, hand over your phone, please.” He held his hand out, palm up, to Henry.

Henry looked at him with incredulity. “You can’t take my phone.”

“I can and I will.”

With another, even more disdainful eye roll, Henry stood up and dug in his pocket. “Yeah, okay, but we’ll see what happens when Mom gets home.” He slapped the phone into Killian’s hand a little harder than necessary.

Killian chuckled. Although he was, deep down, nervous about disciplining Henry for the first time, all his years as a captain of pirates made it easy not to show it. “Believe what you want, Henry. I don’t think either of your mothers will disagree with me on this. Now have a seat at the table there,” he said, indicating the kitchen, “and get started on your homework where I can keep an eye on you.”

Henry was visibly furious, boiling underneath the surface, and Killian was bracing himself for the boy to shout 'You’re not my father!' or some similarly devastating statement. Instead he folded his arms and stated, “My computer is upstairs in my room. I need it.”

“And as I understand it, it’s portable, so you can go get it and set it up in the kitchen,” Killian countered.

With one final roll of his eyes, Henry stomped up the stairs. After a few minutes, he was quietly doing homework at the kitchen table, and Killian began preparations for dinner.

~*~

“I still can’t believe he just stood there and lied to me,” Emma said, blinking at the early morning sunlight as they pulled up in front the converted house where Ashley Boyd ran her daycare. “Or, you know, lied by omission at least. Let me believe he had that English paper situation under control, when clearly he didn’t.”

Killian slid his coffee cup into the curve of his hook and closed the car door. He’d filled Emma in on the situation with Henry as soon as she’d come home the night before. Any trepidation that she might be angry at him for making an executive decision about Henry’s punishment quickly melted away. Mostly, she seemed grateful that he had handled it. After a dinner during which Henry ate silently while Emma and Killian attempted to make normal conversation, Killian had headed out on patrol, spending several hours walking up and down the sidewalks and alleys of Storybrooke’s business district, looking for evil-doers. Now he was sleep-deprived and cranky, especially since it had all been for nothing. While he’d been stalking around downtown, the thieves had hit a business in one of Storybrooke’s residential neighborhoods.

In the face of Emma’s anger about Henry’s school situation, Killian found his own anger had been replaced mostly with empathy. If he and Emma were having difficulty processing everything they had been through, how could he expect Henry to have a handle on it?

“I think we just need to provide an environment at home where he can’t avoid focusing on his studies,” he said as they approached the front door. “And I suppose we should fill in Regina.”

“I called her this morning,” Emma said as they walked through the door. Ashley approached with a toddler on each hip.

“Hey guys, thanks for coming so quickly,” she said. “Give me just a second to get these two settled.”

Killian looked around at the controlled chaos of Ashley’s daycare. Ashley delivered the children she’d been holding to her assistant, who was in the process of soothing another child who’d just had a block thrown at his head by little girl with pigtails. With a grimace, Killian backed away.

“They aren’t going to swarm you, you know,” Emma said as he drank from his coffee cup and tried to drown the cobwebs in his brain.

“You never know, Swan. Best to be cautious.”

“My office is right over here,” Ashley said, leading them down a hallway. “It was my own stupid fault for forgetting to lock all the windows before I went home.”

“No, love, it’s our fault for not tracking down the perpetrators yet,” Killian said as she flipped on the light in a cluttered room dominated by a large desk.

“God, I haven’t even had a chance to talk to you guys since the wedding,” Ashley said. “How are you?”

Killian smiled faintly. “Happy to be married, but not happy to be here under these circumstances. Can you tell us what was stolen?”

“Just money, and there wasn’t that much money for them to take; this isn’t really a cash business. Mostly people write me checks, or I have this new direct debit system…” She opened a drawer and pointed. “But I had this cash box with a couple hundred dollars in it, and they cleaned it out.”

“Ashley?” called her harried assistant. “I need your help for a minute.”

“Can you guys look around while I go deal with this?” she said, and was gone before they could respond.

Emma collapsed in Ashley’s desk chair, seeming disinclined to do any real investigating.

“You said you called Regina?” Killian set his coffee down and then used his hook to grab the cash box by the handle and lift it out of the drawer.

“Yeah, I filled her in, and she’s gonna follow up with the school today to make sure there aren’t any issues with any of Henry’s other classes.” She smirked. “Also I told her you’d confiscated Henry’s phone, so that she knows he’s not reachable that way.”

He probed at the flimsy, broken lock on the cash box with his hook. “This lock was cut with something.”

Emma glanced at it. “Yeah.”

“How did she react to the fact that I took his phone?” he asked.

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t, really.” She let her head fall back against the chair’s headrest. “I don’t like the idea that I can’t trust my own son.”

Killian went over to the window. “There could be fingerprints here.”

“Yeah, we’ll dust for prints,” Emma answered, not moving to do so. “If he’s gonna lie to me about this, how do I know I can trust him about anything?”

Killian felt the need to defend Henry again. “He’s still a good lad, darling, he’s just gotten himself in over his head with school. We’ll sort it out.”

Ashley came back in, and Emma stood up. “We’ll need to check for prints, and we’ll take the cash box with us to the station to do the same.” She pulled out a pad of paper, but her distraction was palpable. “Anything else missing?”

Glancing around, Ashley frowned. Killian couldn’t imagine she’d be able to tell, the space was so cluttered. “Actually, yeah. I had a little Cinderella keychain that Sean got me sitting on top of my computer. I thought maybe it had just fallen off, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Another trophy,” Killian muttered.

“Yeah,” Emma said as she scribbled down a few notes. “Ashley, make sure you check all your doors and windows before you leave each night. We’ll let you know as soon as we know anything.”

Ashley shrugged, seemingly resigned to the fact that the money and her Cinderella keychain were gone. “Okay, thanks.” Then there was thump and a child’s wail from the other room, and she dashed off again.

“I’ll get the fingerprint kit from the car, shall I, love?” Killian asked.

Emma nodded, and then flopped back down in the desk chair.

~*~

“And Henry’s still giving you the silent treatment, huh?” David asked as he tipped the last of his beer into his mouth and flagged the bartender for another.

“Aye, for the most part.” Killian rotated his glass of rum on the bar, resisting the urge to swallow the drink in one large gulp.

“He’ll get over it. You were right to punish him. He lied to Emma and it sounds like he’d been shirking a lot of his schoolwork.”

Killian sighed. “I know, but how much of that is his fault? All the battles we’ve been fighting, he’s been fighting them too. Given the effect it’s had on Emma, can I expect Henry, who is not yet a man grown, to have dealt with it any better?” He sipped from his glass, savoring the taste of the top shelf rum he’d ordered before swallowing it and letting it warm his chest.

“I’m not saying there aren’t good reasons for Henry’s behavior,” David responded, peeling at the label on his empty beer bottle. “There definitely are. But you can be cognizant of that and offer him support in dealing with those issues while still being firm about your expectations of him.” He clapped Killian on the back. “Trust me, you’re doing fine.”

Killian smirked. “Leading a band of pirates was easier.”

“Yeah, well, no one ever said being a parent was easy.”

That label took Killian aback. “I’m not really—”

“A stepparent is still a parent. It’s right there in the name.” He accepted his fresh beer from the bartender with a nod. “And I’m saying you’re being a good one, so take the compliment, Hook.”

They drank in silence for a minute before David spoke up again. “What did you mean about the effect it’s had on Emma?”

“She’s… struggling at the moment,” he said evasively, unsure what Emma would want him to share with her father.

“How so?”

“We’ve had so many traumas in rapid succession, I don’t think she can let herself believe that there isn’t another villain on the horizon. That we’re actually going to get some peace.”

“The honeymoon trip should help her relax,” David said. Killian raised his eyebrows at that, which made David grimace. “Ugh, I just mean getting out of Storybrooke would be good for her.”

“I agree, but she won’t go. Or at least, she says she’s not ready to go.” He took another sip of rum. “I don’t know how to convince her that she doesn’t have to keep sacrificing her happiness for the sake of this town.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid she gets that from Snow and me.” David frowned and looked down at the bar. “I could talk to her…”

“No, she might be cross with me for even mentioning it to you. She’s always so capable and strong; it’s hard for her to depend on other people. Or to be seen as weak,” Killian added.

“It’s not weak—”

“I know, mate.”

Grumpy and Happy came through the doors of the bar at that point, raising the decibel level in room significantly as they called out to other patrons before coming over and greeting David and Killian. When they left to go sit at a table, Killian rolled his next statement around in his mouth, debating whether to actually say it out loud.

“I just want to make her happy,” he said quietly.

“You do.” David held his gaze. “There is no doubt in my mind that no matter what else Emma is dealing with right now, you do make her happy. It still annoys me, frankly.”

Chuckling, Killian stood up and put some cash on the bar, trying to think of an equally good comeback. Instead he held out his hand to his father-in-law. “I’d best be getting home. Thank you for the advice.”

“Any time, Killian.”

~*~

“Shit.”

Killian looked up from his desk, where he was very slowly filling out a report on his computer, typing with two fingers. He could have had this done already if Emma would just let him fill out these reports with a pen, but she said she’d never get the station digitized if he kept creating more paper records. Why that was a priority of hers, he still didn’t quite understand.

“What is it, darling?”

“I’m supposed to be at the school in half an hour for that meeting with Henry’s teachers that Regina set up, but I’m also supposed to be at a meeting with the fire chief that I’ve already postponed three times. Fuck. I read my stupid calendar wrong.” She was staring at her cell phone accusingly, as if it had betrayed her.

“Can I go to the meeting with the fire chief for you?” he asked.

“No, that will only piss him off.”

“Then can I go to the meeting with Henry’s teachers?”

Emma looked thoughtful at that suggestion. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. You’re more familiar with his schoolwork situation right now than I am. Would you mind?”

“Not at all. Anything to lighten your burden.”

She dropped Killian off at the high school on her way to the fire station, and he managed to find his way to the room she’d instructed him to go to with a minimum of difficulty. Regina was already standing in the hall, the shadows of her high-heeled shoes casting a long and grotesque shape onto the polished floor.

“What are you doing here?” she asked with her usual lack of tact.

“Emma had a conflict, so I’m here in her place.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “I set up this meeting for myself and Emma. His mothers.”

Killian tried not to feel hurt at that, and drew himself up to his full height. “Surely as his stepfather I can offer some wisdom. I have been monitoring his time spent on homework fairly closely the last few days.”

“I didn't realize English literature was a prerequisite for becoming a pirate. You’d probably just as soon set him to work swabbing the decks of your ship than send him to school,” she grumbled.

“I happen to think that school is important, Regina,” he said patiently. It’s not as if the two of them had ever really talked about this, so maybe he couldn’t blame her for knowing so little about him. “I spent my childhood laboring as an indentured servant, and the only reason I learned to read was the pains my brother took to teach me by the light of a single candle, belowdecks.”

She gave him an appraising look. “I suppose you are reasonably educated,” she allowed.

“Well, what I didn’t learn at my brother’s knee, I learned in the Royal Naval Academy.”

Regina’s resulting expression was somehow simultaneously impressed and annoyed. “Henry isn’t a naval cadet. You can’t captain him into submission.”

“I’m aware of that. And for what it’s worth, I think he may be experiencing the aftereffects of everything we’ve been through, including Emma and me being Dark Ones, me dying, Robin dying, you splitting into two people, his grandparents being under a sleeping curse, and then of course the final battle. So mostly, now that none of us are dead or battling evil or cursed or grieving, I think he needs our support to get past all of those terrible experiences.”

Regina raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised by his insight. “I… agree.”

“Good.”

“He may not forgive you for taking his phone away for a while,” she said.

“I know.”

Regina smirked, but it seemed to be one of grudging approval.

The door to the classroom opened, and Mrs. Ritchie, the bubbly English teacher, beckoned them inside. Killian introduced himself to the others of Henry’s teachers and to the assistant principal, Dr. Wardmore. Dr. Wardmore was a tall woman with her hair in a severe bun and glasses perched on the end of her nose. None of them seemed to think it was odd that Killian was there and Emma wasn’t, and he relaxed a bit. He and Regina were invited to sit in two other school desks, pulled into a circle with those that the school staff were already seated in. Killian sat down, resting his hooked arm along the armrest that connected the desk to the chair. A couple of the teachers eyed it nervously.

Regina immediately took control of the meeting, which wasn’t surprising, Killian thought. For the moment, he decided to sit back and watch her go.

“I called this meeting so that we could get a complete picture of Henry’s semester. To be frank, I was quite disappointed to learn that we were not informed more promptly that he had missed assignments in some of his classes so that we could take more swift action to correct it.”

The array of teachers before them glanced at each other nervously. Mr. Howard, the history teacher, spoke up. He was a short, balding man with a kindly demeanor. “I appreciate your concern, Mayor Mills.” He glanced through some notes. “I did try to call on a couple of occasions, and I was told you and Ms. Swan were… trapped in a mirror?”

Regina bowed her head slightly to concede that point.

The assistant principal cleared her throat. “We obviously have a pattern of absences going back over a year with Henry. Several weeks missed because he was in Camelot, another several days in ‘the Underworld’, sporadic absences here and there that we were told after the fact were due to funerals, or an unexpected trip to New York, or issues involving the Evil Queen... “ She fiddled with an earring nervously. “You know, when there were two of you… not that you’re evil, Ms. Mills.”

“Henry made up the work he missed when he was unable to be at school,” Regina said, putting on her haughtiest expression.

“Some of it,” Dr. Wardmore replied.

“He has often turned in things late for my class, and when asked to explain, has said his duties as ‘The Author’ required his attention,” said Ms. Collins, the math teacher, a woman in a threadbare cardigan with frizzy hair.

Killian and Regina glanced at each other. While that was perhaps occasionally true, Killian wondered if Henry had been playing the author card a little too liberally.

Before Regina could argue, Killian held his hand out to stop her speaking. “I think we can all agree that it was a difficult year for our family. For all of Storybrooke, actually, but most of the challenges we faced hit the royal family the hardest. We don’t want to make excuses for Henry, but he’s faced some rather extraordinary circumstances, and while his mothers have done what they could, they’ve had their own challenges to face.”

The assistant principal was consulting her notes again. “So the times he was tardy because he was helping his mother…” she ran her finger down a list on a piece of paper, “��be less evil’?”

“Depending on when that was, that could be either one of us,” Regina murmured to Killian.

“Or this one, where the excuse is just listed as ‘Black Fairy’?”

Regina raised an eyebrow. “What’s your point?” she said, her anger close to boiling over. “If it weren’t for my son’s heroics during the final battle, none of us would even be here to be having this meeting.”

“We just want to make sure that Henry is well-positioned to move forward into tenth grade,” Dr. Wardmore said.

“Then let’s focus on that,” Regina said. “If you can provide him with a list of missed assignments, we will ensure that he completes them. Perhaps, if necessary, accommodations can be made for him to receive incompletes now and finish some of the work over the summer.”

Killian didn’t know what an ‘incomplete’ was, but he thought that sounded reasonable. “We will also be working together as a family to make sure that any lingering trauma from the things Henry has been through are dealt with,” Killian added.

Regina nodded, giving him a grateful glance. “Yes, precisely. With Dr. Hopper’s help, of course.”

That seemed to allay some remaining concern with the staff, as they all relaxed, looking at each other and nodding. “I think that’s excellent, Ms. Mills. If Dr. Hopper would provide a report for Henry’s file, then we can certainly make accommodations as you suggest.”

The meeting broke up shortly thereafter, and Killian walked Regina to her car. “The nerve of those people,” she said once they were out of earshot. “They’d all be dead if it weren’t for Henry.”

“They’re just trying to do their jobs,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and pulled out her keys, unlocking her car. “Do you want a ride back to the sheriff’s station?”

“Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” he said, walking around to the passenger side. He slid into the leather seat of Regina’s Mercedes, enjoying how comfortable it was compared to Emma’s vehicle. He leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes as Regina backed out of her parking spot.

“Thanks,” she said, “for the things you said in there.”

“I only said what was true,” he answered without opening his eyes.

There was a long pause as she drove. “I’m glad Henry has you… as a stepfather,” she said, clearly finding paying him a compliment excruciating.

Killian thought about returning a snarky comment, but decided against it. He opened his eyes and turned to look at her in profile. “I love him as if he were my own, Regina. I’ll always do what I can to support him.”

She glanced at him quickly, then back at the road. If he wasn’t mistaken, her eyes were slightly glassy with tears. “I’m counting on it.”

~*~

Killian tapped on Henry’s bedroom door with his hook. There was a long pause before he heard ‘come in’ from the other side.

He opened the door to see Henry seated at his desk, typing on his laptop. “I’m doing homework, you don’t have to check on me all the time,” he said without looking up.

“Actually, I was thinking of getting pizza, and I wondered what you wanted on it,” Killian said mildly. He was getting used to letting Henry’s retorts roll off of his back.

Henry looked up, skeptical. “Not anchovies.”

“Not anchovies,” Killian agreed. “We can get pepperoni, if you really want those greasy red discs.”

“Yes!” he cheered, and then his grin faltered. “We could just get pepperoni on one half, and then something you like on the other.”

“That sounds like a fine compromise. I’ll go telephone the pizza restaurant and place the order.” He started to close Henry’s door.

“Hey, Hook?”

“Yes?”

“Later, do you wanna maybe… do some sparring in the yard?”

Killian’s heart skipped a beat. “I would love that, lad. I’ll go find the practice swords in the shed.”

“Okay, cool. Um, any chance I can get my phone back soon?”

“Let’s see what grade you get on the make-up algebra test you’re taking tomorrow, shall we? And then I’ll consider it.”

Henry sighed, but he didn’t look angry. He even smiled at Killian. “I’m gonna ace that test, so I’m pretty sure that phone’s as good as mine.”

Killian grinned back. “That’s the spirit.”

CHAPTER 5

#captain swan ff #captain swan #cs ff #captain cobra ff #captain charming ff #and hooked queen as coparents #my fic #what comes next fic

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violetfaust · 7 years ago

Note

Hey, what are your top 3 (or 5, if you’re up for it) plots/character dynamics that would’ve made OUAT more interesting but that the writers either didn’t do/tried to do but screwed up royally

Wow, Nonny, I think this might be the best ask I’ve ever gotten (or tied with the one about Regina sending all the random guests at the Captain Swine wedding home with their hearts in favor baggies) and I’ve had some great ones.

And I was going to mull it over as usual and give it the respect it deserves but if I do that it’s going in my drafts and won’t be answered for weeks if ever and will be six thousand words long. So I’m just gonna half-ass it. [Editorial note: it has now been more than a week since I wrote those words and I have been half-assing it in draft all that time. And it STILL got long as hell. This is why no one sends me asks. :-( Sorry, Anon.]

Top 5 characters/character dynamic missed opportunities:

-- First and foremost forever, everything having to do with Neal. Papafire, Fire Believer, Floof Family, Swanfire, Neal/Regina coparenting...every plot since would have been improved, more organic and more interesting by adding Neal. Neal and Emma going back in time and BOTH meeting their parents? Rumple’s Rampage with Neal around--and Neal being the one to banish him? The Dark Two costarring the Dark One’s son? Which wouldn’t have ended with Emma being upstaged in her own story by her Stu boyfriend, but given her the sacrificial moment she deserved.

-- Regina’s love life: With all due respect to OQ, that should have ended the moment Marian was brought back, and Regina’s next and permanent love interest should have been a villain for her to bring back to the light. Hook, if he was kept around after Neverland (the both of them rebounding after Swanfire and Robin/Marian reunited, but growing into something more); Maleficent (written to be a little more bitter/less reformed); Jafar coming off OUATIW (bringing in Aladdin and Jasmine a few seasons earlier, perhaps in place of the Frozen nonsense); even Facilier with the same backstory (which seems to be a fling while she was the Evil Queen, with possibly much stronger feelings on his part that she didn’t return because revenge).

...OR. If the decision was made to ditch the original story of Swanfire, the only organic alternative would have been to go forward with a full-on love story for Swan Queen. (Which to be honest is one of the few things that I think would have prevented the show’s ratings decline and failure.)

-- Ruby should have stayed a main character, and her romance should have been onscreen. I enjoyed the setup for Frankenwolf in S2, but Kitsowitz have been promising a LGBT couple since S3, when all we got was sad, lonely Mulan in love with her straight best friend. (Cutting-edge wlw content, circa 1925.) Ruby and Mulan coulda/shoulda had a long-term, medium-burn romance like Alice and Robin are getting now. Ruby’s friendships with Snow and Belle could also have been respected (and poor Belle wouldn’t have been used to prop her and her family’s abusers). Even after the show had gone down the Stu hole, there was a period when they could have gotten Meghan back (before she became the queen of the Hallmark Channel) and could have gone on from there.

-- The Sheep Boys BroTP should never have been abandoned--especially so that Charming could play sidekick and patsy to a toxic misogynist pirate who never learned from him. Charming and Hook together were basically two frat boys glorifying traditional masculinity (with Hook being the darker, toxic side and again, never changing through learning anything from David). Rumple and Charming were incredibly different, but they had the commonality of putting their wives and families above everything else in the world. Exploring the different worldviews they came even with that common goal could have been fascinating, and expanded both characters.

-- And, of course, probably most of all: Rumbelle, and Belle’s other relationships. Like, I can’t even begin...there are SO many missed opportunities and lost chances with them--beginning even back in S2. What if they’d kept Lacey for more than two episodes and let her play a part in the main story? (I’ll never get over the hilarious visual of Lacey in Neverland.) But overall...just...not piling on stupid, needless, often OOC conflict without any payoff for three or four seasons. Not to say have them always be in perfect accord like Snowing, or a codependent mess like CY, in which Belle kept brushing off any of Rumple’s wrongdoings. But let them work out issues onscreen, let them fight together against outside threats like Hades, let them address their conflicts in ways that made sense in character rather than being excuses to prop a Stu or Sue. (Let’s not even discuss the constant teasing of the BatB TLK and the ultimate utter pathetic anticlimax when it didn’t happen.) While I do think that canon Swan Queen is the only thing that could have definitely saved the ratings in later seasons, IMO a strong Rumbelle story that respected their characters and their story as Beauty and the Beast had a good chance of doing it as well. (Especially if Kitsowitz had had the brains to cash on on the live-action BatB hullablaoo.) But Kitsowitz were too small-minded and spiteful (and ABC too prejudiced and cowardly, I guess) to focus on their best romance.

(Honorary mentions to the Rumple/Regina frenemyship, which I cover below, and to poor Will Scarlet, who should have never been on the show if he wasn’t going to be more than a “soul-destroying” unneeded glitch in Rumbelle.)

Top 5 plot missed opportunities:

[OMG, Violet, you’re not done YET???]

-- The Anti-Magic Organization that Greg/Tamara supposedly worked for would have made a brilliant arc. Kitsowitz should have played that out before heading off to Neverland (it was obviously the plan because they didn’t expect the NL/PP perms situation to resolve so quickly).

-- My best crack theory: Hook found the author in Season 3B and had been using him to manipulate everyone ever since. Explaining Once Upon a Stu--and more important, getting out of it at the end of S4. https://violetfaust.tumblr.com/post/114245381966/what-if-someone-already-got-to-the-author

-- A S5b based on my second-best crack theory: https://violetfaust.tumblr.com/post/143427662086/things-that-absolutely-wont-happen-but-should Rumple and Belle try to get out of Hades’s clutches by working with Regina--who claims to be Rumple’s second-born child via Cora. We could have had so much juicy stuff exploring their past, what Rumple did to Regina, Rumple and Cora (it’s a travesty that they didn’t even have a passing encounter in the UW). It could have led into Emilie’s maternity leave when Hades discovered the truth and kidnapped Belle--which would have led to a 6A in which Rumple rescued Belle from some other dimension but found their child gone. And one of the plot points of 6A would have been Rumple working with the EQ not in some idiotic parody of a romance, but because she called in a favor.

-- BIG BAD FUCKING BLUE FAIRY. Enough said.

-- And then there’s the most destructive missed plot opportunity in the history of the show: Giving Rumple’s and Belle’s POVs in seasons 4 through 6. Given the reveals about the Dark Squad in S5, the most dramatic story this show ever had was Rumple’s battle against the Dark One (and his near-loss) in S4. A S4 that showed his POV of what was happening would have been epic--especially if it did not sideline Belle but allowed her to play a part in trying to save him at the end, culminating in their TLK that freed Rumple but unfortunately also let loose the Dark One, leading to it taking over Emma. Then S5 would have played out as it was advertised: the current Dark One vs. the only surviving former Dark One. Similarly, Belle’s actions in 6A caused nearly all the drama of 6B--and she wasn’t allowed to participate in it at all.

Honorable mention to not including Belle in the Mulan/Ruby/Merida adventure in S5--a one-off that included three of her friends versus her enemy and could have really benefited from having, you know, a MEMBER OF THE MAIN CAST involved in the episode.

#Anonymous #whew #tl;dr #rumbelle #belle french #rumplestiltskin #dark squad #neal cassidy #regina mills #ruby lucas #anti-kitsowitz #op

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