CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alternate Reality
*tw: mentions of abuse, self harm, psychological torture and attempted suicide

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

     SHE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK. He asked if she trusted him and she did but she was starting to wonder if she made a mistake by trusting him. He knew what Zelena wanted and kept it hidden and it almost cost Henry his life. She didn't know what else he could've kept hidden but she was tired of the secrets.

     Zelda tried to keep herself occupied reading a book at Belle's shop and it did help to take her mind off the recent events. She read a lot during her time in Boston and then her therapist told her that reading a lot could be a form of dissociation and was something she did as a coping mechanism from everything she was going through. When Zelda first heard that, she just brushed it off. And if reading was her coping mechanism, then maybe it wasn't such a bad thing because any fictional reality that can only exist in the pages of a book would've been so much better than the reality she was forced to live in. It even made her wonder if there was an alternate reality where she was happy. Maybe a reality where her birth parents kept her and she never had to endure years of Agatha's abuse and decades of Peter Pan's psychological torture. A reality where she was loved and wanted.

     She hated that she even thought about it for a second but she started to think that Zelena wanting to go back in time was understandable. Obviously doing it at the expense of four innocent people was wrong but Zelda felt like if she had a chance to change her past, she probably would've done it too. Knowing everything she went through for almost two centuries, she would've loved to go back in time and change that. She would've grown up with her birth parents and never would've had to experience so much pain. She would've had a mother who actually loved her and a father who felt just the same. She never would've felt lonely enough to be lured to Neverland and she would've had the life she wanted and the life she deserved. She hated to think such a thought but maybe she and Zelena weren't entirely different, although Zelda would never want to rob the lives of four people who had nothing to do with the way her own life turned out. Zelena blamed Regina for the way her life turned out but Zelda could never blame other people for what she went through, especially people who weren't even there when it all happened.

     "What are you thinking?" Belle asked and Zelda sighed as she ran her fingers through her hair.

     "This may be a terrible thought and I hate that I even thought about it. But I don't think me and Zelena are too different," Zelda said as she looked at Belle who just scoffed.

     "You and that witch are nothing alike," she replied.

     "But we do have something in common. We were abandoned by our birth parents and we longed for a life we could never have. Zelena simply found a way to change that and to be honest, if I was able to go back in time and change what happened so I could have a better life, I would've done it. I'm not saying that what she's doing is right because she still hurt and killed a lot of people. I'm just saying that I get where she's coming from," Zelda said as she looked down at the open book, avoiding Belle's gaze.

     How could she sit there and sympathize with the woman who is holding the man Belle loved hostage? How could she sit there and sympathize with the woman who killed Henry's father and wanted to change the past so Regina never would've been born?

     "Maybe you do share something in common, but you two are still very different. You went through decades of physical and verbal abuse and psychological torture. And you still don't want to hurt the people who had nothing to do with any of that. If Zelena succeeds, four innocent people won't exist," Belle said and Zelda nodded as she closed the book in front of her.

     "I know. But I also know that if I had the chance to go back in time and change the past so I could make things better for myself, I would have done it," she said as she looked at Belle.

     The brunette smiled sadly as her phone vibrated and her eyes widened as she looked at the screen. Before Zelda could even ask what was going on, Belle told her that Mary Margaret was going into labour and the both of them rushed to the hospital. Belle asked which room Mary Margaret was in and Belle told Zelda to wait with Henry. Zelda sighed as she sat down next to Henry in the waiting room and crossed one leg over the other while scratching an itch on the back of her neck. Now that Mary Margaret was going to have her baby, it was only a matter of time before Zelena showed up to steal it from her. That was the part that really worried her about the whole situation. If there wasn't an evil witch after them, it would've been exciting.

     "I don't think we've properly met yet," a redheaded man with glasses said as he held out his hand and Zelda looked at him. "Doctor Archie Hopper."

     "Zelda," she replied as she shook his hand.

     "I've heard quite a bit about you," Hopper said and Zelda bit the inside of her cheek.

     "Why am I not surprised?" she questioned as she looked at her knee.

     "Why are you not surprised?" Hopper asked.

     "Assuming you're friends with David, Mary Margaret, Regina and Emma, you must've heard plenty about me and my life," Zelda answered.

     "That would be a pretty accurate assumption," Hopper replied.

     "So, what are you? Some kind of shrink?"

     "A therapist actually, but yeah, you can say that."

     "Therapy wouldn't hurt," Henry said as he shrugged his shoulders.

     "I did go to therapy and it didn't do shit for me," Zelda replied as she looked at Henry.

     "Because you were going to therapy because you were a high school student with recurring nightmares caused by repressed memories when you should've been going to therapy as a young woman who spent over a century trapped in Neverland and had two crappy families since your birth family doesn't really count. And that's not even half of it," Henry said.

     Archie sat there awkwardly while Zelda narrowed her eyes at Henry. "I think your moms need you right now," she said.

     "Why would my moms-"

     "They definitely need you."

     Henry sighed as he got up and walked away, leaving Zelda and Hopper alone in the waiting room. Zelda exhaled heavily through her nose as she crossed her arms and leaned back in her seat.

     "You know, we don't have to talk about anything you don't want to. I do think it would be beneficial for your mental health and healing but only when you're ready," Hopper said and Zelda looked at him.

     "Why do you even care? Up until today, we've never spoken. The only reason you even know about me is through people you know who I happen to know as well," she replied.

     "I don't have to know you to help you. At this point, I can only offer you my help. Whether or not you accept it is your choice. And I get the feeling you never really had much choice in your life," Hopper said and Zelda looked down at her knee as she swallowed the lump in her throat.

     Hopper seemed nice but she still wasn't sure. Therapy only helped her learn to cope with her nightmares but it never got to the root so it was really just a bunch of band-aid solutions but she couldn't blame the therapist she had. After all, she knew nothing about the realities of Zelda's life and Zelda had no idea herself so how could she have gotten to the real problem? But in Storybrooke where literally anything was possible, there was a therapist there who she could actually talk to about what her life was really like and she wouldn't sound crazy. And once the truth was out, maybe he could actually help her with the real problem. Maybe he could actually help fix or even manage the cause instead of just managing the symptoms and hoping they wouldn't flare up again for a long time.

     "Do you even get paid enough to listen to other people's problems?" Zelda questioned and Hopper chuckled before clearly his throat.

     "Let's not worry about that. If you ever do wanna talk, then that would be something to discuss but for now, I just want you to think about it before you decide on whether or not you're ready," he said and Zelda sighed as Henry returned from whatever conversation he just had with his moms.

     While Henry was looking through the real estate section in the newspaper, Zelda went into her photo gallery and went back to deleting more stuff to make more space. She deleted more photos she took while she was living in Boston, more specifically the photos with the Kims. She wasn't sure if she wanted to get rid of the photos with her and Ashley but she definitely wanted to get rid of the photos with her fake parents.

     "The witch is coming!" Leeroy yelled and Hopper and Henry immediately stood up.

     Zelda got up and followed them through the hallways until they found Regina outside of the room Mary Margaret was in. Regina told them to go hide and Zelda and Henry both left to find somewhere to hide from Zelena.

     "What about you?" Henry asked once they locked themselves in a closet.

     "What about me?" Zelda questioned.

     "At the boathouse, there was some kind of aura around you when you fought the witch's flying monkeys. It was like you were on fire," Henry explained and Zelda sighed as she shrugged her shoulders.

     "To be completely honest with you, I don't know what it is either, much less how to use it or control it," Zelda replied. "That's not important right now. Right now, we just hope Regina is strong enough to keep Zelena away from Mary Margaret's baby."

     Zelda and Henry stayed silent but when they listened, it was also silent around them. "It's too quiet," Henry muttered.

     "Wait here," Zelda said as she opened the door and looked around to see if anybody was in the hallway. When she saw no one around, she walked out of the closet and looked around the corner where she saw Regina leaning against the wall and rubbing her eyes. "Oh, shit! Did the witch take Mary Maragret's baby?"

     "Unfortunately," Regina answered.

     Zelda turned around and Henry rushed over to his mom while David walked out of the room but Regina stopped him. "If you go after her, you're gonna get yourself killed," she said as Emma and Killian arrived.

     "Please tell me you guys have some sort of good news 'cause this mess is a shit show," Zelda said while looking at Emma.

     "We found Zelena but there's another problem," Emma sighed. "She took my magic."

     "How the hell did that happen?" Regina questioned incredulously.

     "It doesn't matter how it happened, it just happened but there has to be another way to defeat her," Emma said.

     "There is no other way. Light magic was our only chance," Regina replied.

     "You can do it. The only reason Zelena was able to defeat you was because you were using dark magic against dark magic. But what if you could use light magic too?" Henry asked.

     "Dark magic is all I have," Regina answered.

     "No, it's not. When you kissed Henry and broke the curse, it was true love's kiss. That was light magic," Emma said.

     "I don't even have my heart right now," Regina said.

     "So? You broke the curse without it and even though you lost to Zelena before, you were still able to fight her without it. What makes this any different?" Zelda asked.

     "Mom, I know you still love me and I truly believe that there is good in you," Henry said.

     "Everyone else here believes you can do it. The only one who doesn't is you," Zelda said and Regina sighed.

     "Alright. I'll try," she said.

     Zelda looked through the window and saw Mary Margaret lying in her bed and she could tell she was clearly crying. Zelda couldn't blame her after she literally just had her baby stolen from her right after he was born. She didn't even get to hold him for two minutes before Zelena came in and took him. Zelena had already caused so much pain and death and she needed to pay.

     "I'm going with you guys," Zelda said.

     "Hey, no. Zelena is too powerful," David replied.

     "I could at least fight her freak of nature minions. I've done it enough times that at this point I could do it with one hand tied behind my back," Zelda said as she started walking towards the exit.

     "I can't remember if she was always this stubborn," Emma said.

     "Probably something she picked up in Boston through the last year," David replied as they left the hospital.

     Even though they were able to find where Zelena and Rumpelstiltskin were, there was still worry about taking Zelena down. There was still hope that Regina would be able to use light magic to defeat her but that didn't mean there was a chance that they could fail again and Zelena would be successful in going back in time to change the past now that she had everything she needed for a time travel spell.

     "I have an idea. Just go inside and try to stop her," Zelda said as she ran around the side of the barn, leaving everyone else confused but they still went in prepared for a fight.

     Zelda found a ladder that led to a window and climbed the ladder. When she got to the window, she looked inside and saw everyone trying to get to Zelena while her time travel spell was enacted. She crawled through the window and carefully walked along the wooden structure as Killian looked up and saw her. She put her finger to her lips, silently telling him to be quiet and he nodded as he tried to hold his ground while she got as close as she could to Zelena. The witch has just thrown David and Robin into a wall and Zelda saw her chance.

     She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and when she opened them again, they were bright orange. She jumped from the wooden beam she was standing on and Zelena turned around when she heard a yell and Zelda punched her right across the face leaving her stunned. When she regained her composure, Zelda was surrounded by a bright orange aura as she went to hit her again but Zelena waved her hand and Zelda felt a sharp pain in her head as a flying monkey flew in and knocked her off her feet. While Zelena was distracted by Zelda's surprise attack, Regina was close enough to grab her green pendant but Zelena was too quick and grabbed her by the throat with her magic.

     Zelda sat up as the aura around her disappeared while she rubbed her temples and forehead trying to soothe the intense ache but it wouldn't go away. She couldn't focus on what was going on around her but the pain started to dull and she slowly stood up while still trying to soothe the ache.

     "Are you alright?" Emma asked and Zelda nodded.

     "I'm fine. It hurts like a bitch but I'm fine," she replied.

     "That was pretty dangerous, what you just did."

     "I got to punch the witch so that's a win in my book."

     The pain lessened some more and Zelda looked at Regina who was holding Zelena's pendant. Without her power, the spell couldn't be casted and more importantly, David could bring their baby back to Mary Margaret.

━━━━

     ZELDA LEANED AGAINST THE WALL WITH HER ARMS CROSSED AS SHE WATCHED REGINA TALK TO ZELENA. She wondered what they could be talking about but then figured they could've been talking about their mother. When Regina stepped out, Zelda thought about the thought she had earlier, the same thought she shared with Belle about her and Zelena not being too different from each other.

     Zelda walked into the room and ignored Emma and Killian's protests. She stood in front of the bars and couldn't help but chuckle at the mark on Zelena's face from when she punched her. "Nice welt, bitch," she laughed and Zelena glared at her.

     "What do you want?" she sneered.

     "I don't really want anything," Zelda said as she shrugged her shoulders and put her hands in her pockets. "You know, earlier today, just a little while before Mary Margaret went into labour and you stole her baby, I had this twisted and dare I say dark thought."

     "Do you honestly think I care about what thoughts you have going on inside your head?" Zelena questioned.

     "You might wanna hear this one. Anyway, I was thinking earlier today that maybe you and I aren't entirely different," Zelda said and Zelena scoffed.

     "Oh, please. You don't understand what it was like for me," she said as she turned away.

     "So, I don't know what it's like to be given up by my birth parents and spend my entire life wondering why they didn't want me and also being abused by the same person who was supposed to raise me and take care of me?" Zelda questioned with her arms crossed and that was what made Zelena turn around and look at her while Zelda nodded her head. "Yeah. My birth parents gave me up when I was a baby. I wasn't even a year old. I was taken in by the Smiths but James died before I could even remember him and I spent the next years of my life with Agatha who was a raging alcoholic bitch who would throw her empty bottles at me and tell me about how much she hated me and wished she and James never took me in and just left me to die and she manipulated me my entire life so I could never leave. Hell, I even burned myself with matches while living with her."

     "What happened when you did leave?" Zelena asked.

     "I never really left. I was lured to Neverland and I was promised freedom when in reality, I was trading one prison for another. I spent almost a hundred and eighty years being psychologically tortured by Peter Pan to the point where I tried to kill myself. Eventually, I did escape and I found Regina, Emma, Mary Margaret, David and Killian. Me and Regina kind of started off on the wrong foot but they helped me escape Neverland and when Pan casted another curse, Regina gave me new memories and I spent a year living in Boston with the Kims thinking I was a seventeen-year-old high school student but then I found out the Kims were really just your flying monkeys. Quick question, why did you send those flying monkeys to spy on me for a year?" Zelda asked as she sat down in the chair in front of the bars.

     "There's something about you that you don't even know. Turns out, I was right but you'll find out soon enough," Zelena said vaguely and Zelda scoffed.

     "Should've known you were gonna be vague with me. Anyway, Killian and Emma found me and brought me here to Storybrooke and while you were running around messing with other people's lives, I still didn't have my real memories back but then I did get them back and I ended up finding a journal Agatha wrote and found out the truth about so many things she lied to me about like the fact that she didn't always hate me, James never left he actually died and that I wasn't sixteen when I was taken to Neverland I was actually nineteen so physically, I am a twenty-year-old woman in a body that is almost two hundred years old. And not once did I think about hurting or even killing other people or erasing someone else's entire existence," Zelda said as she stood up and stepped closer to the bars. "How's that for not understanding?"

     "Are you gonna say you wouldn't change your past if you had the chance?" Zelena questioned.

     "No. If I had the chance to change my past so my birth parents kept me and I never had to go through all that abuse and torture for almost two centuries, I would've gladly done it. But here's where you and me are different. If changing my past for a better future came at the expense of other people who had absolutely nothing to do with my issues, I wouldn't do it because guess what? My abandonment issues and trauma from physical and mental abuse and psychological torture are nobody else's problem just like your mommy issues and inability to let go of your envy is nobody else's problem. Like I said the other day, you should really consider going to therapy and just maybe, I don't know, get over yourself," Zelda said as she turned around and left the room.

     She didn't look at anybody else as she left the police station and leaned against the wall once she was outside. She ran her fingers through her hair as she took a deep breath and quietly counted to herself as she exhaled slowly. She hadn't spoken about everything she endured out loud for a while and remembering everything she ever went through was a heavier weight on her shoulders than she thought. And then she thought about what Dr. Hopper said at the hospital. Maybe talking to him wouldn't be the worst idea but all she knew was that this couldn't keep weighing her down forever.