A/N: Some dialogue taken directly from Wicked. Random re-reading and boredom inspired.
So her family had gone seditious in her absence. How ironic it was, that she had grown out of it- or been forced out- just as they had grown into it. But had they been like this when she was a girl, Elphaba couldn't help but think that she might never have become Fae. She liked to think so, that her convictions were hers, of her own volition, but she couldn't be sure. Oh, this business of nature vs. nurture, of what-ifs, of Adepts and pawns more than nettled her. She hated it.
But her sister a traitor, ruler of her own usurped province! Her father turned a shrewd political strategist! Shell a vagabond spy!
And she, on the fringes once more, having lost at her own game; she, the failed insurrectionist, fighting longer and harder against a heavy tide and still losing, and it all coming so much easier to her family.
"He is a foolhardy boy," Frex said of Shell, "And he will be among the first casualties, once this really gets going. He resembles you, in some ways."
"He's gone green?" she had asked.
"He's stubborn as sin stains," her father had replied. She tried not to let the implication sting, for it was true: she would have been among the first casualties, if she had stayed. She was stubborn and singleminded and even reckless, when pushed far enough.
If she had stayed. If she hadn't gone to the mauntery. She would be dead, probably. And what of Liir?
The idea of death didn't discomfit her. Other Land or not, she would be free. And if, perchance, there was an Other Land? Sarima's words haunted her: He would be there.
But she wasn't finished, she knew. There were things that had to be seen to. She'd come into this world unfinished, and she wasn't going to leave that way, too, not if she could help it.
The Grimmerie, Chistery, Liir, Sarima. Nessarose, Frex, Melena and her dalliances. Morrible. The Wizard.
Yes, there were things she had to do, she saw; it was good that she hadn't taken herself off to a cave. That ineffectual seclusion was something she had finished with. She wasn't like Frex. She might be a failure but she refused to abjectly succumb to it, as he had. She would try, she would try, and she would go down trying, and she might not succeed but she would go down trying. That much, she did owe the world, and herself.