Sorry for the double alerts, guys. The sight ended up deleting this, so I had to re-post. I hope you enjoy and I hope everyone is doing well. I miss hearing from y'all :)

Baby, why'd you leave me, why'd you have to go?
I was counting on forever, now I'll never know
I can't even breathe
It's like I'm looking from a distance, standing in the background
Everybody's saying, he's not coming home now,
This can't be happening to me
This is just a dream

~"Just A Dream", Carrie Underwood

It was times like these she missed her mother the most.

While her memory of the woman lacked greatly, sometimes, in the deep recesses of her mind, snippets of the part of her life came forward and pushed their way to the surface. She'd had a kind face, she remembered. That nearly electric smile that charmed any person, man, woman, or child, who happened to cross her path. With that smile often came soft, sound advice.

Oz only knew she could use some now.

With slow, deliberate steps, she rounded yet another corner of the long corridor, searching for something, anything, that might come to aid. Finding nothing, she bit back a bitter laugh and gave a stubborn shake of her head.

What good could advice possibly do at this point, anyway? It wasn't as though she would listen.

One memory in particular stood out. She couldn't have been more than three or four years of age. IN a rare, lucid moment, her mother had sent for her. Confined to the bed, she remembered how pale she had been, how gaunt the rest of her slender frame had seemed compared to her protruding abdomen, heavy with the promise of a new life. Her words had been as the caress of her daughter's emerald cheek: gentle, loving, but with a steely edge that held a hint of warning.

"Never trust a man, my Phaba. They serve for nothing but to bring disappointment."

She had not understood what her mother meant then; the woman died two days later, leaving her behind with a father who didn't love her and a sister who became more of a master than a sibling. Yet she loved them as best she could because they were all she had in the world.

But, as time passed and memories faded, somehow those words always managed to hold fast to her mind

"Never trust a man, my Phaba…

"Never trust a man..

"Never trust…"

"Never…"

And wouldn't you know it? That's exactly what she had done.

In one vulnerable, fleeting moment, she had allowed her heart to rule over her mind and she was paying the price.

They all were.

Because of her foolishness, her father and Nessa were dead, half of Oz wanted her dead, and in Glinda's mind, she was as good as dead. And Fiyero-

Fiyero

Oz, it hurt even to think his name. The sweet, brave, wonderful, foolish man she had loved from afar for so much of her short life. Lurline only knew where he was now.

Or if he even lived.

It was because of him that she had lived at all. In their brief time together, he had shown her how to love. In his arms and under the stars, they had bared all to one another, physically, emotionally, and otherwise. He had loved her as she had only imagined in her wildest dreamings and yet she still wasn't sure what had taken place had truly happened.

With him, she felt she was a human and not a thing, a woman rather than a witch.

Loved, instead of loathed.

In Fiyero, she had found the soul she had lost so long ago. As he held her close in the aftermath, cuddling close under the course material of his captain's jacket, he had whispered his affirmation of love into her ear, and then shouted it loudly into the trees. He declared that he wanted the world to know that it was she who held his heart. He was not ashamed of her, he said, as she had no reason to be ashamed of herself.

And so, lured in by sweet words and secret rendezvous in the night, she had allowed herself to trust in him. Believe his words when he told her he loved her. Accept that he wanted her as she was. Have faith in the promise that he gave her in their final moments together, as she voiced her lingering doubts.

"We will...see each other again?"

"Elphaba…we will be together always"

Foolish, foolish man. And she, the foolish woman who had believed because she had wanted something to believe in, something to hold onto.

And yet, her world had only served to come crashing down. In one, reckless moment, when she went where she shouldn't , stayed when she should have left and fought with a woman she should have forgotten, he decided to play that gallent hero and instead, only served to seal both of their destructive fates.

She vowed to do something worthy with her escape. She owed him that much. So, for hours upon hour, she had poured over the Grimmerie, searching for spells, chanting whatever came to her mind, praying to a god she'd never believed in in hopes of saving him. There were moments when a glimmer of hope would spring forth. Maybe he was fine! Somehow, he'd managed to escape and was making his way back to her as she spoke.

Maybe he hadn't escaped, but somehow, someway, her efforts had been fruitful. In her hopes, they guards had been unable to harm him. That he'd somehow walked away and would come through the door at any moment, wrap her in his arms, and reassure her that this was all just a bad dream that would end with the morning light.

Fiyero was a man of his word. He would come back to her. He would prove her mother's words wrong.

He had too.

Releasing a breath, she closed her eyes and, for a brief moment, allowed herself to relax.

But, as brief moments do, this ended all too soon. For it was as she opened her eyes that the Monkey handed her a piece of paper, she heard Glinda's voice in the distance, and she knew.

Dreams, whatever the kind, are simply that.

"We will be together, always"

Lies. Just as he mother had warned.

As her eyes took in the words on the page, blurred by unbidden tears, all fight left within fled and any lingering shreds of hope died with her anguished cry.