I wake, suddenly, with a gasp. The dream, a nightmare if you will, still clings about me, fogging my thoughts, and I take a few shaky breaths of air to calm myself. It had been too real, too vivid to slip easily into the realm of the forgotten. My first coherent thought is for my son, complicit in my dream already forgiven, and I start from the bed, practically flying down the hallway to his bedroom. The reassuring pile of bed clothes and the softly rotating lights reassure me not all is lost – not yet. The memory of the dream haunts me still, my passive acceptance of my doom disgusting me. While I still stand, while I have breath in my body, I will play the game, bend every rule there is, just to win.

I pad silently downstairs, trying not to wake my sleeping son, filling a glass with whiskey with a practiced motion. It burns at my throat on the way down, the pain reaffirming my ability to feel – a sign, perhaps, that I am still alive. I shudder as the memory of the blade hitting me creeps back into my vision, and a second and third glass quickly follow. They do they work, and when I return to bed sleep comes easily, without dreams.

Just a few hours later, light weakly filtering through the curtains, I wake and dress, leaving Henry to sleep just a little longer. Out of the kitchen window I glimpse the apple trees, and have to check. Rotten to the core, she said. The apple under my hand is solid and firm, even as I clench my fist around it. I bite it, pure and sweet as my apples always have been. I smile, pleased, but the force of the dream is enough to cause me to reach up again and pluck another apple from the tree. Firm and sweet, it seems, but as my fingers curl around the all too perfect exterior, its flesh gives way, cracking under the pressure, a sign of the decay inside.

Gold is no help, and his sick pleasure, the twisting of his mouth and barely concealed snicker, make me think that the rules of the game we play might not be all I had thought. I watch the pathetic inhabitants of this too perfect town as I leave the deal-maker's shop. Not one of them, I think, is capable of defeating me. Not there, in that other land, nor here, even with power and magic stripped from me. Victory, they say, belongs to the one who wants it most. Well, little people with your little lives, that person is me. Have you ever had to give up the thing you love the most for the thing you most desire? Have you watched your father die, his blood slick and hot upon your hands, so that you could be free of your mother's hate? Have you destroyed worlds and countless lives and maybe even your own soul just so that, for once, you could watch someone else lose? No, not one them has, or ever could. And that is why, against all the odds, this time I'll be the one to win.

I feel their eyes on me as I enter Granny's diner, fear and respect in their gaze. The cheap diner smells of them, of disappointed hope, crushed dreams and unrequited love. Some, I think, look at me confused, as if trying to remember something just out of reach. I know what they are reaching for, even if they do not. David, or whatever his name is here, refuses to look in my direction. Foolish man, I think, to reject me, in both lives. Steadfastly standing by his godforsaken morals, knowing that they serve him badly, yet choosing to remain loyal, even if it means losing all.

That's the difference, between these sheep and me – they expect that good things happen to good people, a kind of cosmic karma, and they wait, true and pure, only to be disappointed again and again. I know, and Gold knows, that if you want something, it's not enough to deserve it – you have to earn it, pay for it with sweat and blood and pieces of your very own soul. They wait, in blissful, cursed ignorance, for a saviour to come and rescue them all, when they could be out making their own happy endings. And damn it all if the saviour hasn't arrived this time.

Damn Emma Swan, I think as that wolf girl hands me my coffee, eyes wide at the scowl on my face. Damn her. I have to fight the anger that wells up inside, the urge to hurt and maim, to throw the scalding liquid at the next person that looks at me sideways.

I don't, of course. Such things are not appropriate behaviour for the town's mayor, no matter the provocation. Besides, venting the anger would only let it dissipate, weaken, and I need its strength for the fight ahead. I imagine, seeing it clear in my mind's eye, shutting the clasp of a box, anger trapped within, and locking the padlock tight. I am rejuvenated, driven anew, strength climbing again as I slip the playing card onto the child's bicycle. Her father, I know, will not fail to answer. He is weak, without the strength or conviction to do what he knows he ought. Jefferson, when he arrives, is too easy too control, to willing to bend to my whim. I might not know the rules but at least, I tell myself, I still know how to play the game.

It's a risk, showing him the vault, but it is a calculated one – he can always be dealt with, later. The loss of Daniel's ring hurts, but less than I might have expected, once. The memory, however, of Snow taking that fateful bite, is just as sweet and satisfying as the first time. I watch again as she bites deep into its flesh, juices filling her mouth, and I wait expectantly, eagerly, every fibre of my being focused on this moment in time, exalting as she takes her last choking breath. I let the feeling fill me from head to toe, more lasting than childhood joy, more comforting than a mother's love, more satisfying than the most skillful lover. I imagine that feeling spreading out from my heart, right to the end of each and every hair, letting the taste of victory fill my mouth.

Baking the turnover is easy, the stages learnt by rote long ago. With each beat of the whisk, or roll of the pin, I imagine the face of Emma Swan, contorting as the poison runs through her veins. I can see it, the crumpling fall of the lips, the widening of her eyes as she realizes, the panicked fluttering of her hands as they grasp at her throat. The thrill is visceral and, for a moment I pause, close my eyes and allow myself to wish the huntsman had not forced me to dispose of him. Had he still been here, my plaything, I would have called the Sherriff's office immediately and celebrated my latest perfect move.

The door bell draws my attention, retrieving me from my fantasy. A pricking at the back of my neck tells me who this will be, and I smooth my shirt, check my cuffs, careful to keeps my traitorous face from betraying me as I open the door. She looks around, uncomfortable, and I know she is trying to play the game – I recognize all the signs. But she is too late, far too late, so far behind the current set of moves, practically prehistoric in her understanding of the landscape. Just how far outmaneuvered she is, I know is well beyond her grasp.

"Whatever this is between us needs to end," she says and I see her olive branch for what it is – a ploy to trick me, convince me of her harmlessness. She is breathing heavily, her words coming in fits, like she has run a marathon, or taken a new lover, and I wonder whether she knows the game is ending, falling down around our ears, with her as the figurehead of the losing side. Her moves have been mapped out ahead of her long ago, and she has no idea who wrote the lines she is speaking now.

"I'm leaving town," she says. It throws me, off balance, unexpected. More than a play, then, a concerted effort to finish the game. I might have respected her, had she left it there, had she declared herself and left. The will and the strength to change to game, to simply step back and stop playing, is rare enough, I know. But then, inevitably, come the stipulations – the evidence she's nothing more than a pawn in a game she doesn't accept exists, and pawns are always outclassed by queens, evil or not.

As with Jefferson, it's almost too easy, the victory not hard enough won. A streak of jealous flair – my son – not faked, is all it takes to convince her, make her believe I accept her terms, grudgingly. She looks suspicious, for a moment, of my apparent about turn. But, you see, that's the thing about 'good' people, even when the goodness is as patchy as hers – they never expect the rules to be broken.

She looks at me, slowly, her eyes flicking from the pastry to my face, and I feel my breath hitch in my throat. I want to imagine her as she bites into it, I want to imagine the pain and writhing agony in the moments before she slips into the death-sleep, but I find I cannot. Instead I see her as she was, rescuing Henry from the mine, face smudged with dirt, standing on my doorstep for the first time, imagine her stood lonely, blowing out a solitary cupcake candle. An innocent, I think. That's all she really is. Under the hype and the prophecy and her unfortunate lineage, she's just a girl who stumbled into the wrong town and didn't leave. I might feel sorry for her, had I not been an innocent myself once. I smile brightly at her as she leaves, content in the knowledge I will never see her again.

Once she has left, I turn my back to the door, allow myself to laugh. I feel euphoric, close my eyes, tilt back my head, and revel in my victory. Soon I will go to Gold, gloat, tease him with the truth of my victory, but now I stand in my house, in the land I created and run, more than proud of my achievements.

My exultation is broken by the sound of returning footsteps. It is Emma, her face contorted not with pain but with anger, a lifeless bird clutched in her hand. She shakes it in my face, uncaring of its germ and parasite burden.

"I trusted you," she says, "for once I trusted you and look what fucking happened." She shakes the bird again, a blue feather floating to the floor. "I threw it part of your turnover – being nice – and it just keeled over and died." She throws the body at me, aiming right for my face, and I barely manage to duck in time. She has her fists wrapped tight in my shirt, pushing me back against the counter, her stupid face scared and betrayed and angry. I know the look well, have seen it in the mirror more times than I can count. Its small comfort, I think, to know that as my plans fall through, Snow White's precious daughter is more like me than can be imagined.

"What have I ever done to you?" she asks, and I have to laugh. To honestly, truly laugh. It's the rallying cry of the downtrodden masses, those still naive enough to think life ought to be fair. She looks taken aback by my mirth, and for a second I think her grip loosens, before tightening again.

"It's not you, Miss Swan," I say, gesturing airily with one hand, "this is just – old business." Her jaw tightens, sets, and I see that all this time she had really thought that this was in some way personal, that it really was all about her. I laugh again, and her face changes, and I know that suddenly she believes in the curse, in my son's fairy tale books, in the terrible and unchanging nature of the Evil Queen. There is pounding at the door, and I know that she is not the only one to suddenly understand, that all over Storybrooke people are remembering, waking up, and have come for my blood.