A/N: I just want to take a quick second to emphasize that this fic is strictly musicalverse, so book!Mel is the foundation of the characterization, but there's a fair amount of deviation from the dedicated family woman that we all know and love. As well, I'd like to warn you that we'll be dealing with a few canon-compliant deaths down the road…so, you know, Act Two is going to be as rough a ride as it usually is, if not rougher.

Finally, I owe a great big thank you to ComingAndGoingByBubble for being my second pair of eyes. This is the first fic that I've completed in five years and it couldn't have been done without her help.


1. Sign

She sits on a green bench with her back to a green façade and a green child at her feet and things are not at all what she imagined they would be.

People bustle by with shopping bags and hat boxes, with pocket watches and briefcases, with their own agendas and no attention to spare, and all she longs for is acknowledgement from one of them. She positions the basket just out of view, so they'll have to go to the effort of craning, and fixes her eyes on those who pass too close.

The briefest glance; the slightest hint of disgust. This is all the provocation she'll need to leap to her feet and proclaim that she has every right to be here, because she has been wronged at every other turn. In twenty-two years, all she's known is being paraded around, shipped off, left behind, and it's culminated in this sad excuse for a family: the man who saw fit to bundle up her baby and send it away before she even closed her legs. Nine months of fuss and nine hours of hell for a child whose state is the only thing worse for Munchkinland's future than dead – unordinary.

Green.

"It must be a sign," the midwife said, over and over. This is mainly her fault.

Melena was content to believe that the baby was stillborn. Despite the kicks she tallied while lying awake at night, despite the dim recollection of a cry at the moment the pain plateaued, despite Frex's queer lack of mourning, she believed it, if only for a paucity of alternatives. When she heaved herself up and demanded, "What is it? What's wrong?" and he arranged his face into a frown and turned, feigning grief in the poorest bit of theatre she ever saw, she allowed herself to believe it was over and went on believing it for three days. That is, until she hauled herself to the dining room, lighter on her feet, still heavier than ever before, and the cook dropped a crumpled note onto her lap at the same time that the porter presented her with a letter on the governor's stationary.

The letter was from Frex, claiming that he would be out on official business in Appleton for a fortnight. She, meanwhile, would be well on her way to the county of Dead Trees, where she could recover from the difficult delivery with the support – ha, she thought and still thinks – of her father. When husband and wife reunited in precisely two months' time she would be willing to try again with better results. It was not a request.

Hands trembling from sheer indignation, Melena then shook out the nearly illegible note from the midwife, who begged for assistance in placing the child, the one Melena had given birth to, the one that was not stillborn, with someone who would be worthy of it. I've never seen the likes of this, the note said, though she seems to be in fine health, considering.

Melena was stunned momentarily, but it wore off with ease. As her eyes darted between the two messages, the plot – attendant risks and all – unfolded before her with perfect clarity.

She would not be returning home, not immediately. The Crossroads wasn't far off; she would rendezvous with the midwife there and engage a carriage to take her west to Ozmatown, where she would place the little abomination with someone worthy of it. She would interact with potential informants at each stage – the coachman, the wet nurse, various innkeepers – all of whom would surely relay her whereabouts to Frex, but did not. She would surely lose her way, winding up in some seedy area that was best not traversed alone, and not by a young woman no less, but she did not. She would surely be refused an audience on account of being the governor's wife and not the governor, but she was not.

It was a narrative of confrontation and subterfuge, and she the heroine of it, but the plan fell into place without a hitch and she's faced up to nothing – except the verdigris of the baby, which matches the fresh hue of the city to a degree that is almost startling.

It's a sign.

But Melena does not believe in signs. She believes in chaos and coincidence. Even now, squinting down the sunlit court of the emerald palace, it is not the hand of fate nudging her on, but a futile urge to spite her husband or her lover or mankind in general. "A green baby," the midwife said, "on the night of the Wizard's induction," emphasizing green, as if it were really divine intervention and not the poison from the glass bottle that Melena kept locked in her writing desk all these long months.

Chipped mouth, peeling label; it's the crux of this plan, that bottle – the only link between the three of them. Melena has it tucked away in the inner lining of her skirt with the four prayer cards that she's collected from the quack on the corner. She feels it gouging her hip, but she doesn't adjust.

Instead, she leans forward and peers down, looking once more, looking for traces of herself, for a sign, but it's too early to tell. Two eerily-focused black eyes peer back and it wriggles, issuing a pathetic mewing noise that makes her wince. It's an ugly little thing, better suited to a dark alley or the steps of a cathedral, but it's just a baby – decently formed (considering), quiet as far as newborns go, and perhaps the only character in this farce who has yet to pass judgement on her.

"Almost time," Melena says, her hand closing tighter around the ticket.

It responds with more whimpering, no doubt yearning for the wet nurse dismissed hours ago. Melena yearns for her too; she does not want to go in alone. She concludes – not for the first time – that she is in over her head. A bell tolls three times in agreement.

When the guard calls the group forth, Melena rises languidly and joins the other ticket-holders at the gate. She stares past the iron insignia, admiring the spires at a closer range, the ascending towers, absently listening to the murmurs of excitement rolling through the party. It takes pull to land an audience with the Wizard of Oz, to hear them tell their stories, but it is entirely worth the effort. He's been known to bestow gifts on those he deems worthy. And other things, she thinks, snorting. At this, they turn her way and she reddens, swinging the basket around her legs to shield its contents from sight.

The guard notices, glowering down. "All personal effects are to be left outside the premises. It clearly states so on your ticket."

Melena's eyes go wide and she wraps a hand around his arm. "Please, sir," she says, drawing him aside. "The midwife said the child won't last the week. If the Wizard can…I don't know where else to turn…I mean no harm…"

She gives the basket a shake. The baby flails.

A worrisome lull quickly terminates in a terse nod and the guard spins on his heel, beckoning the group to follow him under an archway. They amble into a long, narrow corridor – green accents on the walls, green carpeting – and the only occupants of note are two more guards, barring another heavy set of doors. Their eyes immediately drop to Melena's 'personal effect' and the first guard leans in, defending his lenience. They tense, unpleased with the decision, and she smiles sweetly at the one who assumes the task of watching her, as the other launches into a slew of perfunctory instructions.

Don't stand too close. Touch nothing. Avoid speaking unless spoken to.

Melena calculates her moment and seizes it without hesitation. As the new guards twist towards the throne room and the first one retreats to his station, she steps in, affecting solidarity with the group, and then ducks back out. She absorbs a glimpse of the chamber, but it doesn't yield anything particularly clear through the darkness. This is promising. They won't notice her absence.

She scouts a ledge by a window and settles in, waiting for the party to reappear. She drops the basket by her side and presses the blanket in tighter around the baby. It lets out a gurgle that is dangerously close to a cry.

"Oh, shush," Melena snaps, wrestling her own pangs of discomfort into submission. She is tired and bored and heavy, so heavy, in every part of her body. A headache squeezes her temples, and she closes her eyes.

Not half an hour later, the doors swing open and Melena packs herself into the alcove, hardly daring to breathe as the snippets of hushed conversation slip further and further down the corridor. She struggles to place their impressions given the distance, but none dare exceed a whisper and she does not know what to make of their awe – or whether she should regret missing the show.

Either way, the guards conduct the visitors out and disperse, possibly to track down their missing charge, and Melena pokes her head around the corner to confirm that she can emerge without drawing attention. Satisfied, she steals to the throne room and throws open the doors, grunting from the exertion required of her.

It appears to be an extension of the corridor, sparsely decorated, directing focus down the centre. Through the darkness, she makes out the looming form of a massive head, hanging slightly askew. It is designed to be human – the sculpted nose, the mouth, the eyebrows – but the eyes are empty, their bronze sheen is luminescent. The thing is not human at all, and Melena is unnerved by its presence. She skirts it completely, fearing it will spring to life, and then twitches the surrounding curtain aside and sees that it isn't remotely magical. The rear side of the head is flat; a wall of entangled levers and pulleys.

Melena's fingers slide over a protruding handle and she thinks of the man who caught her eye at the market and pulled a foreign coin from her ear, dragging genuine laughter out of her as if it was his sole purpose in life. She remembers how he looked right through her and saw everything there was to see, how breathless she was that day, how alive. The thrill that ran down her nerves when he slipped through the servant door, reeking of ambition, and coaxed so much elixir past her lips that she didn't regain control of her limbs until well after his departure.

They thrive in her, these fleeting images, and she vaguely recalls their colour and their taste when they are juxtaposed against the stark clarity of waking up alone and hurtling back towards reality. Nothing from him, in all these months, as she was left to reconcile herself to Frex, to state dinners and condescending officials, to not being afforded so much as an afterthought. His visit could have been a dream for all the fog that shrouds it, but the pain of the descent cuts like memory.

Melena steps onto the platform, raised like an altar, and sets the basket on the stool without ceremony. She wonders if she should stay and submit herself to his protection anyway – or if he would even be willing to grant it. Perhaps he'll think similarly of the baby. He'll think: this is a mistake. A calamity. A sign, in the worst ways.

It makes no difference. It shouldn't, at any rate. She fishes the bottle out of her skirt and thrusts it into the folds of the blanket. Then there is the makeshift birth certificate recorded by the midwife, who wrote the date of birth on a discoloured scrap of paper and punctuated it with her official stamp. Melena wrenches the crumpled wad from her pocket and a few of the prayer cards follow on the way out. She leaves them scattered on the floor.

Her stomach twists into a thousand individual knots. This is all there is to do; this is the extent of her participation. Whatever he decides it to be, she's washed her hands of the matter.

As she turns, she realizes that she hasn't touched the baby. Not once.