Fever Dreams

Ruby and Dr. Hopper were walking toward to the center of town, the psychiatrist on a walk with Pongo and the part-time werewolf toward the diner.  They caught sight of each other on opposite sides of the street, and then they saw Morgana lying in the road near Gold's pawnshop.  There were no cars around in that moment, but that wouldn't last forever.  In order to make sure the good witch wasn't run over, Dr. Hopper immediately dialed Storybrooke Hospital while Ruby monitored her friend's vital signs.  Bianca and Jasper Gold passed by, on their way back from school, just when the ambulance pulled up to take their friend to the ICU.  All this worry about the witch with two hearts, aka the person who worried the most about other people's welfare before her own… and she wasn't even conscious for it.
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While Morgana lay in a hospital bed, Cecil and Nathan kept watch over her.  Belle had been contacted too as she was Morgana's closest friend after Rumpel, but out of respect for the dead, Nathan had insisted she attended Baelfire's funeral instead of coming immediately.  The reason why Rumpel's son had been disappearing so often, and how he had wound up in a hospital bed himself a couple days after his "big sister", was because of a split personality.  Because Rumpel had absorbed him into his body after being resurrected, his life had been prolonged.  But as even dark magic cannot escape the embrace of death, Zelena was bound to get her full grasp on Rumpel sooner or later, but until that time, both of them had been doing all they could to get free and make sure Morgana was all right.

"All this and more by the two people who were more family, or friend, to her than anyone else in her life," mused Cecil.

"And when she wakes up, she'll find out that one of them died to protect her," added Grell.

"She'll be sad that Neal didn't live up to his bargain to be best man at her wedding if she ever married."  The off-duty death god arched an eyebrow as he adjusted his glasses in a curious way.  Cecil pointed to his eye tattoo, indicating clairvoyant powers at work.  "Usually, it only works with seeing into the future, but I guess in her unconscious state, she's getting a glimpse into the past.  I'm picking up unbelievably high levels of brain activity from her, despite her minimal physical reactions to stimulation."

"Do you think I could borrow that notebook of yours?"  Cecil gave him a questioning look.  "I don't have any powers to speak of, but my skills as a spy include near perfect recall.  You monitor her visions and I'll mark them down for you.  I'm sure Morgana will want a detailed description of what she saw when she wakes."  Cecil conceded that this was a legitimate argument, and after handing his spell/notebook to the former spy and part-time shinigami, he grasped Morgana's right hand and closed his eyes.  His eye tattoo glowed lavender with psychic energy as he dictated what she saw.
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It began with a baby, brought to a far off land by a cyclone.  A poor couple had found her in a clearing and brought her home; from the start, the man said she was bad luck, blaming her for everything from the roof leaking to being short of food, but the woman treated her as if she had given birth to her and not the unfortunate person who gave her up.  After the woman died, the baby girl, now a young woman, decided to go to the Emerald City to seek her fortune and to learn about her true parentage.

The great and mighty Wizard of Oz, though no wizard at all, gave her a pair of silver slippers and told her that her mother was a queen.  She had a sister too, younger by a few years, and both her mother and her sister lived in a place called Fairytale Land.  Wanting to see them at once, and to learn to use her inherent magic, she clicked her heels three times and wound up right in her sister's room.  Seeing no one around, she began exploring, trying out different odds and ends including a challenge that the sister's tutor had set out for her.  The sister had to put a stone underneath a dome without lifting the dome up, but she was struggling significantly.  The young woman performed this with no trouble when all of a sudden...

Rumpelstiltskin appeared and demanded to know who she was and what she was doing here.  The woman revealed herself as Zelena, Cora's firstborn and a natural born magic user.  The Dark One was suspicious, having thought Regina was the heartless Queen's only child, but a quick pluck and a strand of hair proved what she said was true.  And as Zelena had discovered moments before, she had an inborn ability for magic, something Regina struggled to comprehend the basics of; to add insult to injury, she didn't hesitate to use her worst memories and her hatred toward others to power her magic:  the father who had always hated her, the mother who gave her up, the local children who were afraid of her magic abilities... well, sure as Alistair gave up his heart so that Morgana could see him one more time, the Dark One was pleased.

Morgana remembered a specific interaction roughly eleven years before the great curse before Belle was even a faint wisp of thought in her mind.  She had been going to bake her best friend a meat pie, a favorite from when he was mortal, when she found his latest student doing so.  A redhead of modest beauty and considerable talent, but whereas Morgana's magic was powered by sadness and desire for peace, she sensed this woman had something darker stirring inside.  A quick exchange of names revealed the woman's name was Zelena, a native of the land of Oz and first-born daughter of Cora.  While the Witch with Two Hearts had her doubts, she decided not to press anything, revealing her name in kind but saying nothing about the desperate and unstable daughter Cora already had.  Regina had enough problems to deal with already, being one of many pawns Rumpel was manipulating in a greater game, a game they had played together for over 300 years.

At dinner that night, Rumpel broke Zelena's heart, saying that though he was aware of her talents with magic and apparent love for him, if only as someone to give her the means to exact revenge on those who wronged her, he would still choose her unqualified sister over her.  Morgana would never say it, but she agreed with Zelena's anger at her dearest and most long suffering friend; in her place, Morgana would have lit his ass with a fireball and then left him to rot in the dark forest as a ferret for a few days, even if her skin did turn green when overwhelming envy consumed her.  The Witch with Two Hearts shook her head as yet another of the Dark One's enemies faded in a flash of green smoke and fire.  The woman who claimed to be Regina's sister would be back one day, just like all the others, but unless she could find a way to kill Rumpel without the dagger, she'd have just as much chance as anyone, including her, i.e. no chance.
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Nathan was scribbling away in Cecil's notebook, taking down everything the seer said.  Cecil's eye tattoo glowed with lavender light, the same color as Morgana's magic, as he gripped tightly to their friend's hand.  Both comatose patient and radio host had brows beaded with sweat, Cecil from his concentration and Morgana from the visions going through her troubled mind.

"It's changing now," said Cecil.  "Are you still writing?"  The red-head nodded, finishing up the short ponytail he was tying before picking up the book and pen again.  "Morgana isn't anywhere in these visions.  Take careful notes or I dread to think of what might happen."

Cecil described a young peasant woman, living and working in squalor where no one appreciated her for anything other than her luscious figure.  The only thing she wished for, with all of her being, was to never want for anything again.  When she heard a prince was passing through, she did everything she could to charm him in the hopes of winning access to his generous coffers.  The decent looks were an added bonus she thought as she satisfied his hunger that night, both actual and more lascivious in nature.

Their encounter left her pregnant with his child, and thereby cast her as the Hester Prynne of her village.  The only thing missing was the crimson A on her chest, but unlike the determined and mild woman forbidden from making wedding veils for her actions, she was more determined than ever to get into the castles, and bed chambers, of the royals.  She met a young king, Leopold by name, and in spite of her lowly station, she enchanted him with practical knowledge and honeyed words of asserting his will over others.  And then... Eva came.

"Wait!" Nathan stopped Cecil in mid vision and grasped Morgana's other hand.  Her head tossed back and forth on the crude pillow on the hospital bed, her breathing coming in quickening gasps.  Her forehead practically bled sweat as her eyelids burst open.

"I know how the story ends," Morgana cried as she stared frantically at the ceiling.  She only registered that the voice of Night Vale and the gender-questing shinigami were beside her after her breathing had slowed.

Nathan's red hair fell around her face as he hugged the still vulnerable body close to his own.  Thank St. Sebastian she was awake.  "I don't think she can tell the end of her vision if you cover her face like that," came the sarcastic voice of Cecil.  Nathan withdrew so Morgana could speak, but he shot the seer a nasty look as she sat up in bed for the first time in two weeks.

"That was no prince whose baby she was carrying," Morgana said.  "It was someone who wanted the truest believer, a child with stronger magic than any before, to come into the world.  Leopold and Eva never knew, but exposing her past infraction left Leopold with no choice to but to expel her from the court, adding to her public ignominy.  And after the birth, you know what she did?  She abandoned the child to the forest for HER own best chance, never thinking of anyone but herself.  Zelena was alone in the world from the moment she entered it, and if I have my way, she'll be alone going out of it."

Cecil could sense righteous anger and still jumbled revelation radiating from his fellow witch.  There was no time to process though as all three heard the screams of a woman coming from an adjacent room.  Cecil felt a harsh, wracking pain in his abdomen, but after Nathan had established it wasn't the aftermath of his being medium for Morgana's visions, he knew they could only mean one thing.  Yep, this was definitely Emma's little brother or sister coming into the world; they were coming at the most inopportune of times.