Summary: When you leave your world behind everything changes. When you find yourself alone your strength can falter. Elphaba Thropp is now the Wicked Witch of West; what does the City of Emeralds have in store for her? What lays in her future? And why has her determination faltered?

Genre: Romance/Drama

Rating: T

Author's Note: This is a sequel to the story "Loathing: The True Story Behind the Friendship of the Witches of Oz" but reading that first is probably not necessary. A basic knowledge of the book should be enough. Also, this story is mostly bookverse but there are some elements in it that are from the musical. Just bear with me and hopefully you'll be able to figure it all out.

Any similarities to the fanfiction "Black & White" by "TheWitch'sCat" are purely coincidental and due only to the fact that that fanfic is absolutely stunningly amazing and I recommend you go read it right now! I don't intend any plagiarism of either TheWitch'sCat nor Gregory Maguire and this is all in good fun.

--

Breathe
Book I: Of the Emerald City

--

He smiled in both sadness and a strange sense of pride. "Goodbye," he whispered to the silent air. "Goodbye Elphaba."

--

Chapter One:

Blood. It came in rivets. Pouring down her skin like the raging river of Suicide Canal. She watched it quietly; was memorized by it. The knife gleamed in the flickering light of the candle as it dug deep into soft, green flesh.

The bar the Witch had chosen smelled of the very filth of the world. The drunken men around her stammered and stumbled as they tried to get a glimpse of the silent woman – the only woman – that sat near them. Every now and then she would let a man take her to the dirty, small bathroom where they would have a chance to feel her strange, sewn-shut body. She never allowed the lights to be on and she never allowed anything more to occur than simple touch but from that touch she managed to scrounge together enough money to buy her the scraps of food she survived on. Every man, every touch, tore away a tiny piece of her soul until there was barely anything left.

Eventually the candle burned out, plugging the table the Witch sat at into darkness. She stared at her arm but she could no longer see the blood that stained her skin. A small part of her – the sentimental part – wanted to cry. She wanted to mourn all the friends she had left behind; all the memories she would never get a chance to make. But she was passed that now – beyond such trivial feelings.

She was part of a higher plan now.

Her name had been stripped from her. Her personality buried in the back of her mind to forever be lost to her. She was a tool now; just a blimp on the radar of the greater plan. A small, almost unseen, piece of the larger puzzled of the revolution.

She was just a child to the ones above her. Untrained and untested. She could not be trusted with anything of importance until she had completed her small tasks of unimportance. She delivered letters to strange addresses in shaded parts of the Emerald City. She hid herself behind thick clothing of black, blues, and grays. She slept beneath bridges, in alleyways, and sometimes in the cellars of houses she managed to sneak in to.

To the revolution her name was Fae. To everyone else her name was the Wicked Witch of the West. Her green skin gave away her identity so she was forced to keep herself covered in dark clothes and stay in the shadows. The men she let feel her for a few coins only ever saw her shrouded in the dark and they were always far too drunk to notice the slight green-tinge of her skin that the darkness did not quite hide.

She was careful of who saw her naked, even in the darkness, for she knew what a disaster it would be if word got out to Oz – if people knew – that the great and terrible Wicked Witch of the West was letting men molest her to make her way through life she would be ruined. Any chance of using her Wicked title in the future to further her cause would be destroyed.

She could not allow that to happen.

She stood up suddenly, grabbing her broom – which was almost completely useless to her now – from its place beside her on the cushioned bench, and left the bar. She stumbled slightly as the few drinks she had had blurred her vision. She gasped at the shock of the cold air that hit her when she left the bar. She reached into her bag – checking to make sure that the Grimmerie still resided there. She calmed at the feeling of the worn leather covering of the ancient magickal book. She pulled down the sleeve of her dark brown dress to cover her wounded arm. The blood still poured from the deep cuts and made her head ache but she pushed away the dread in the pit of her stomach.

The Witch mounted the broom as she hid in the shadows behind the bar. It did not fly. It had not flown for her in months and she feared that she had lost her talent in sorcery. In scared her, to know that she might be failing in the one thing she claimed to have some fame in. What would Oz think if they found out that the Wicked Witch could not even get her broom to fly anymore? The fear that kept people away from her would be gone and she knew that she would be hunted down in a moment if they thought she was no longer capable of performing the sorcery they rumoured her able to do – the sorcery she had never really been that inept at to begin with.

She threw the broom down in anger and sat exactly where she had stood. Her back rested against the outside wall of the bar she had just been in. She laid down, curled in on herself, and pillowed her head in her arm. She fell into a fitful sleep that lasted no longer than three hours. She was jerked awake by a small crash near her – created by a stray cat knocking over a garbage can – and, looking around her, deduced that it was still at least two hours before dawn.

She scowled, let out a sigh of anger, and stood up – hastily grabbing her broom. She wrapped her arms around her shivering and far too thin body and left. She cut a random path through the dark alleyways of the inner workings of the Emerald City in hopes to make it to the place she commonly met her connection to the revolution.

She hated arriving after he did.