Wanted to do a Wicked fic for a while, but never got around to it until now. Enjoy!
Elphaba leaned forward on the broom propelling her across the late day Ozian sky as she tried desperately to reach Kiamo Ko as soon as humanely possible. She knew the guards would grab Fiyero the moment he dropped his gun, which she also knew he would do. There was no way in Oz he would keep up the façade about killing Glinda much longer after Elphaba had left. Elphaba made a futile attempt to push these thoughts away as she approached the large Arjiki castle.
The viridian woman slowed her broom as she pulled up, slowing the broom's momentum. As she came ever closer to the imposing building before her, her feet eventually pressed against a wall, higher than Elphaba had intended. Thoughts of Fiyero urged Elphaba to move quicker as she kicked off the wall, and landed on a balcony below her rather roughly. She ignored the aching pain developing her knees as she pushed inside a castle. Fear began to stew inside of her as her thoughts drifted to images of her dear Yero being tortured for information about her. Unable to stay calm for any longer, Elphaba let out a screech as she burst into the castle.
"FIYEROOOOOOOO!" Flying monkeys scattered in every direction as Elphaba burst in, obviously distressed. Concerned for the emerald woman who had granted him his freedom, Chistery scampered off after her, followed by a handful of the other monkeys. The small group followed her through several of the castles corridors until Elphaba finally came to a stop at a door; the one leading to the witch's sleeping quarters. Under normal circumstances entrance was prohibited too all but her, however, in the current situation, the monkeys were too concerned to simply let this go.
Elphaba frantically rushed into her room, making a bee-line for her bed-side table. She swiped the Grimmerie off of it before turning on her heel and rushing over to a stand she had been using to hold the Grimmerie. She threw the mysterious book onto the stand and tore it open, turning pages like mad, hoping to find something for Fiyero. The words melded and moved before her eyes, the dead language not wanting to be read. Her eyes darted from page to page, understanding a word here and there, but none relevant! She stopped somewhere halfway through the book as two words jumped out at her.
Life. Death. Willing to take a chance on the spell, Elphaba adjusted the book on the stand before placing her arms firmly in front of her and her eyes in the book. She began pouring all of her energy into the fluid motions of her arms as she attempted to cast the spell.
"Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen. Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen!" Elphaba fell forward, gripping to stand to keep herself from falling onto the floor below her. The chant had drained her of her strength, as her ragged breaths came few and far in-between. The monkeys approached slightly, but drew back as the witch arched her head up and screamed to the ceiling.
"Let his flesh not be torn, let his blood leave no stain!" Elphaba had always had a strong agnostic view to her, no belief in Lurline or the Unnamed God, but she abandoned these religious ideals briefly for the sake of Fiyero. "Though they beat him let him feel no pain! Let his bones never break and however they try to destroy him let him never die!"
"Let him never die…" Elphaba stood again as she felt her strength begin to return to her. She adjusted her arms in front of her again as she prepared to chant again, focusing on the words fading in and out of comprehension.
"Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen!" As she continued, the words on the page slowly began to merge into the illiterate scribbles of the lost language held in the pages of the Grimmerie. Elphaba desperately attempted to focus intently on the words of the spell before she couldn't make it out anymore, but to no avail. The words before her were once again the jumbled mess of a lost society. "Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum meleka? Eleka?"
With an inarticulate scream of unadulterated rage, the green woman hurled the book across the room, allowing it to collide with a wall and fall to the ground. The monkeys fled behind various pieces of furniture at the spontaneous outburst, but they stopped cowering long enough to nudge out of their hiding places and glance worriedly at the outraged woman pacing in the center of the room.
"What good is this chanting? I don't even know what I'm reading!" Elphaba questioned her motives as she crossed the floor to retrieve her spell book, spine bent and pages crinkled. She wanted to continue flipping through the pages, but that desire was thrown out the window as she looked at the pages within. The unreadable language taunted her as it failed to unscramble for the frustrated witch. With another screech, she tossed the book back at the ground. "I don't even know what trick I ought to try!"
Elphaba crossed over to a window, looking out through the dusty glass towards to Ozian sky. Foreboding storm clouds were rolling in, likely to bring a shower to the Vinkus. "Fiyero, where are you? Already dead or bleeding?" Elphaba caught a ragged breath in her dry throat as she fought back an onslaught of tears. "Just one more disaster I can add to my generous supply?"
The emotional peak hitting Elphaba bowled her over hard enough to let loose a massive force of her uncontrolled powers, accompanied by another howl from her.
Hell was let loose in the small room as furniture began being hit by something from all directions. The stand for her Grimmerie flew across the room, impacting across the wall with a loud clang. Monkeys chattered and fled, fearful for their lives. A desk toppled forward with a crack, an empty dresser was thrown against the wall, a window shattered, and a bookcase fell apart in an instant. Elphaba drew in a sharp breath as she recomposed herself. Monkeys looked in from the hall, not positive if the chaos had stopped.
Elphaba looked up with an icy glare, brushing some bits of wood from her face. "No good deed goes unpunished!" She growled, wiping at cuts and plucking splinters embedded in her skin. "No act of charity goes unresented! No good deed goes unpunished!" She stood, pacing the small room, stepping over the bits of furniture spread here and there. "That's my new creed! My road of good intentions led where such roads always lead!"
She screamed again at the world around her. "No good deed goes unpun-" Her words were interrupted with a gasp as she fell forward to her knees, a hand supporting her and a hand clutching her stomach. "..ished." She held back a cry as she recalled all the good deeds that had led her to where she was now. A wicked witch sitting in an abandoned castle filled with abominations of her own creation.
"Nessa…" The younger Thropp sister was now dead under a house, enchanted shoes taken by some bratty half-pint as a souvenir of Munckinland. The shoes Elphaba had enchanted in the hopes of allowing Nessarose to walk and gain more independence, only to leave Nessa with the scrambled mess the poor girl's life had become.
"Doctor Dillamond…" The only teacher to ever understand Elphaba, the only Animal she had ever seen defying the Wizard for the good of Oz. He was now cooped up in the Emerald palace, without a soul and unable to speak to the pleading witch.
And so many others in her line of wicked work! Her parents, just as dead as Nessa. Boq, tin and without a heart. The monkeys, hideous, in pain, and hunted by the rest of Oz. Glinda, left alone after Elphaba had flown away on a broomstick. The lion cub, off somewhere in the dark woods, terrified of everything he saw. Even Dorothy, to naïve to realize that she's being used by the Wizard as a pawn. Yet sill, nothing mentioned was her worst offense.
"Fiyero…" Her wonderful, wonderful, Yero! Possibly dead at the hands of the Gale Force, looking for information he wasn't stupid enough to give up. Her beloved idiot, stuck up on a pair of poles in the middle of some wheat field, an abandoned cadaver. The thought was too strong for Elphaba to stomach as she stood and let out a sickening scream as the castle rumbled from the sheer force of her released power. "FIYEROOOOOOOOOO!"
The distraught woman struggled to stand as she brushed stray glass from the shattered window out of her hand. "One question haunts and hurts, too much, too much to mention!" She ignored the blood staining her hand and turned to the untouched mirror in the corner of the room. "Was I really seeking good or just seeking attention? Is that all good deeds are when looked at with an ice cold eye?"
She turned away from the mirror, no longer able to look herself in the eye. "If that's all good deeds are, maybe that's, the reason why!" She thrashed her arms as her shawl settled itself around her frame. "No good deed goes unpunished, all helpful urges should be circumvented! No good deed goes unpunished! Sure I meant well," She threw her arms out in a gesture to the mess around her. "Well look at what well-meant did!"
She squinted her eyes in irritation and threw her arms down at her side. "All right enough so be it! So be it then!" She looked out the window to the thundering clouds above Oz as her vision clouded with fury. "Let all Oz be agreed; I'm wicked through and through, since I cannot succeed!" She crossed her arms and rested her hands on her shoulder in a small stint of vulnerability. "Fiyero saving you, I promise no good deed will I attempt to do again." She thrust her arms to the sides of her as she returned to her stoic disposition "Ever again!"
"No good deed, will I do," She crossed to the window and leaned her head out as she screamed her last word on the matter to the expanding land in front of her. "AGAIN!"
She stepped back from the window as she finally let herself simmer down. She collapsed on her bed with a number of desperate breaths, exhausted beyond belief. She felt tears begin to well behind her eyes, but fought them back effortlessly. She stood and exited the room, monkeys moving aside.
She couldn't cry.
Not anymore.
The Wicked Witch of the West didn't cry.