A/N: Soooooooo… no idea where this came from. I wrote the first half of the beginning section last week in one of my many notebooks during a ten-hour car ride from Washington, D.C. back to where I live. I rediscovered said notebook today and went to type it up, and when I went to think of a way to finish it, the angsty last part just sort of wrote itself. .: shrugs :. Gotta love random angst.

Disclaimer: I'm not that girl.

Melena squinted against the sunlight, shading her eyes so she could see out into the harsh glare of the early afternoon. "Elphaba!" she called, but, as she had expected, there was no answer. Her two-year-old daughter seemed to take great delight in giving her heart palpitations by disappearing without warning. Melena was decidedly not in the mood for hide-and-seek today. Where has the little wretch gotten to this time? she wondered irritably. Allowing some of her annoyance to creep into her voice, she tried again. "Elphaba! Come here this minute! I mean it!"

The harsher tone produced the desired effect. There was some rustling and a hint of movement over in the garden to her left, and then the green-skinned toddler appeared, advancing solemnly on all fours. Melena raised an eyebrow as she asked, "Whatever are you playing at now, child?"

"Me dwagon, Mama!" little Elphaba informed her proudly. "See?" And she let out a snarl that, coupled with her green skin, made her just a bit too convincing for Melena's comfort.

"Sweet Oz, Elphaba," she snapped, "don't carry on so! You're a little girl, not a dragon. Now get up and come inside, please; it's time for your nap."

The child scowled briefly at the mention of a nap, but obediently climbed to her feet and toddled over to her mother. "Heew, Mama, me pick you fwowa," she announced with a cherubic smile, and held up her hand to reveal a rose in full bloom clutched in her little fist.

Melena's heart melted, and she couldn't help the answering smile that spread across her face. "Oh, sweetheart, thank you! It's beautiful!" She reached down and carefully took the flower from her daughter, wincing slightly as she pricked her finger on a thorn. The jolt of pain made her realize that Elphaba would have had to grab the rose quite tightly and pull hard to pick it, and on top of that, she had probably had a death grip on the thing ever since. There was no way she could have avoided being scratched by the thorns. She quickly knelt down and pulled the little hand towards her, turning it palm-up, and gave a small gasp when she saw several ugly, deep-looking cuts marring the skin. "Elphaba, honey, don't these hurt?" she asked, alarmed.

"Es." The toddler shrugged a rather indifferent affirmative response. "Fwowa poke me."

Melena stared at her daughter in amazement. Any other two-year-old would have been crying and carrying on something fierce with injuries like these. But little Elphaba seemed to have simply accepted the pain as a natural consequence of picking the flower. It was as though she was already teaching herself not to feel the sting of such miniscule hardships, because she knew even now that pain was all she could ever expect from life.

Feeling guilty for her earlier impatience, she scooped the little girl up and planted a kiss on the green cheek. "Come with Mama, sweetie. We'll put some medicine and a bandage on those cuts, and then you can have your nap, and by the time you wake up, they'll feel all better. Does that sound good?"

"Mm-hmm," nodded Elphaba, laying her head on her mother's shoulder and sticking her thumb in her mouth to suck on.

"All right, then, inside we go."

A little while later, Melena had taken care of Elphaba's hand, and was sitting in a rocking chair in the toddler's bedroom, holding the child and stroking her soft dark hair as she slowly drifted off to sleep on her shoulder.

A dragon, indeed, she thought, remembering her daughter's earlier game. No, Elphaba's not a dragon. She's a rose. My sweet little rose. With love and attention and a little patience, she has the potential to grow and bloom into something beautiful to behold. The trouble will be getting people to see past the thorns…

Melena sighed heavily. Elphaba was really a very endearing little girl – friendly, intelligent, and well-behaved… well, most of the time. But a little streak of mischief every now and then was to be expected in any child. But people caught one glimpse of her green skin and refused to look any farther. They couldn't – or wouldn't – open their eyes to the fact that she was really just a normal little girl. All they could see was the one thing that made her different.

Even Frex was guilty of judging little Elphaba solely by her appearance. The only reason why he hadn't quietly poisoned the girl long ago, or smothered her with a pillow some night while she slept, or dropped her down a well to drown, was because he was certain that she wasn't his. She was not his mistake, not his fault, so she was not his responsibility. If he had had any suspicion that Elphaba might really be his daughter, Melena knew he would have gotten rid of her the day she was born.

She frowned at the thought of her husband. His accusations of her infidelity were completely true, of course, but she would never give him the satisfaction of admitting it. Why should she? It wasn't as though Frex didn't have plenty of little secret dalliances of his own when he thought she wasn't looking. Not that she cared. The two of them had been inseparable while they were courting, but once they were actually wed, the passion that had existed between them seemed to wither and die a slow, disappointing death.

Perhaps that was why she seemed to have grown so attached to her emerald-skinned daughter. She loved Elphaba partially to spite Frex. The child was a tangible reminder of the only period of true happiness Melena had known since her wedding day. Odd that the only time I was ever really happy in my marriage was when I was with a man who wasn't my husband.

She leaned down and pressed her lips to the top of the dark head pillowed on her shoulder. "Oh, my little one, your way in this world is not going to be easy," she murmured. "But I hope you find happiness for yourself, and love too someday, and I hope you have better luck than I in keeping it. Be brave, my little dragon-girl, my little rose, and when you find that happiness, that love, hold onto it with everything you've got. Don't ever let it go."

Little Elphaba heard her mother's words, and they were imprinted on her memory as she finally drifted off to sleep. At her young age, she understood much more than most people gave her credit for. She wasn't sure exactly what Melena meant about happiness and love, but she knew it was important, and she had a feeling that she should remember it, so she did.

xXxXx

Twenty years later, as she paced like a caged Animal around the tower chamber she had chosen for herself in Kiamo Ko, her heart so bruised and broken that every heartbeat was sheer agony, the Wicked Witch of the West recalled the words Melena had whispered to her that afternoon so long ago.

My little rose, her mother had called her. She had meant well. Everyone loved roses. A rose could turn into a thing of great beauty if given the proper care, and that was what Melena had wanted for her daughter.

But she had forgotten that a rose could also be torn apart, its petals scattered to the ground and trampled beneath the weight of uncaring feet. A rose could wither, could shrivel up and die without the water and fresh air and sunlight it desperately craved. The last ray of sunlight had been extinguished from her life, and without it – without him – she was left in utter darkness. She knew that without that last shred of life he had coaxed from within her, it was only a matter of time before she crumpled and succumbed, her strength sapped away by the crushing blackness of despair.

A cynical half-smile curled one corner of the Witch's mouth upwards as she ran her thumb gently over several small scars on her opposite palm. This rose was in its death throes, its once vibrant petals drying and turning to dust that vanished in the wind. Now all that was left of it, all that anyone would remember, were the thorns.

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