A/N: I was watching a video of Katie Rowley-Jones (original London cast Nessarose) performing "Wicked Witch of the East," and when she got to the line, "Alone and loveless here with just the girl in the mirror, just her and me…" the inspiration for this jumped out and bit me.
On a completely unrelated note, Wicked has just opened a permanent production in Germany. And if you haven't heard the German cast yet, go look them up on YouTube. Right now. I mean it. I don't even care if you don't speak German. I don't speak German. But they are just incredible. Willemijn Verkaik plays Elphaba, and Lucy Scherer plays Glinda, and they are both absolutely phenomenal. Especially look for the press call videos of Lucy doing "Popular" (in German it's "Heiss Geliebt") and Willemijn doing "The Wizard and I" ("Der Zauberer und Ich"), and also the video of Willemijn doing "No Good Deed" ("Gutes Tun") in rehearsals. So go check them out. You know I wouldn't be wasting your time ranting about them here if they weren't worth it.
-eh-hem-
Anyway, now to the story!
Disclaimer: I checked. It's still not mine. Surprised? I was…
Elphaba had always hated mirrors.
She hated mirrors because they could not and would not lie. They were incapable of deceit. They could do nothing except display the truth of whatever was brought within the scope of their reflective glass. It was impossible for a mirror to be anything except completely and brutally honest.
How odd it was that she despised mirrors for possessing the very trait on which she had always prided herself – unflinching integrity.
Even as a child, she had shied away from any glimpse of her own reflection, and the aversion had only grown stronger as she grew older. She avoided puddles and other bodies of water, metal, glass – anything that had the potential to display her own image back to her. She didn't need to see herself to know that she was hideously unattractive; her father made a point to remind her of it daily. So she simply stopped looking.
Truth be told, she couldn't remember the last time she had willingly taken a look in a mirror before the night when Glinda (then Galinda, with a 'Ga') had tried to turn her popular. And when she had reluctantly taken the small hand mirror from her blonde roommate and glanced into it solely to appease her, she had been startled by what she had seen. Her features were the same as they had always been, but somehow… she saw them differently. She looked into Galinda's mirror and didn't recognize her own reflection. And for the first time in her life, she looked into a mirror and thought she just might like what she saw. The realization had shocked her so greatly that she had had to flee her friend's presence before her emotions got the better of her. But she would always be grateful to Glinda for giving her that one moment when she hadn't been ashamed of her reflection.
A long while after that – very recently, in fact – Elphaba had had an encounter with a mirror of a different sort. When Fiyero had first declared his intention to leave the palace and come with her, she could hardly believe it was happening. But every bit of the love she had secretly guarded and cherished all this time had been reflected in his blue eyes when he looked at her, and finally she had accepted that it was real. She couldn't fathom why he didn't seem to see her as she knew herself to be. However, she decided that she liked the person he saw when he looked at her – someone passionate, someone beautiful, someone worthy of his love. At first she had been terrified to think what he would do when he discovered how flawed she truly was. But even when her imperfections were all out in the open, laid bare to his gaze, he still held her close, still kissed her as though he could never get enough, still looked at her as though she were the most incredibly gorgeous sight he had ever seen. She still didn't understand the magic that the mirror of his love had seemed to work on her, but with Fiyero, she had been able to believe, just for a little while, that the woman she saw reflected in his eyes, radiant, happy, and free, could actually be her.
There was a mirror in the room she chose for herself in Kiamo Ko. A large mirror in an ornately carved wooden frame, attached to the vanity that sat in the far corner. She caught sight of her reflection in it one day and winced. Her curtain of long, black hair was confined in a severe knot at the nape of her neck, her forehead creased with the constant strain of holding despair and madness at bay, her dark eyes tense and haunted with the memories of the disaster and pain she had brought to those she loved best, her mouth tightly drawn as though to hold in her screams. She didn't recognize this woman that she saw in the mirror, and the realization terrified her. Somewhere along the way she had lost herself. Elphaba had disappeared, leaving behind this broken, bitter, hollow shell of a person… the Wicked Witch of the West. And the Witch didn't know how to get Elphaba back.
She hated that mirror. She wanted it gone. She did not want to look at what she had become. Because as much as she hated the mirror, she hated herself more. And since she could not destroy herself as thoroughly and as satisfyingly as she would have liked, she settled for the next best thing. With a sudden burst of movement, she snatched up a heavy golden candlestick that sat within arm's reach, wielding it in both hands like a club. In just a few swift strides she had crossed the room and was standing at the vanity, glaring malevolently at the offending sheet of reflective glass and the imposing figure that occupied it.
She hesitated only a moment, recalling an old superstition she'd once heard: if you break a mirror, you'll get seven years' bad luck. But then a cynical smirk curled one corner of her mouth upwards. Seven years' bad luck? Oh, please! she scoffed mentally. My whole life has been nothing but one endless run of bad luck. What difference will a few more years make? And without any farther ado, she swung the candlestick as hard as she could, shattering the mirror into millions of tiny fragments.
The shards of glass fell onto the vanity and the floor around it in a cascade of disjointed images, colors, and lights. And when the dust settled, she discovered that destroying the mirror had not, perhaps, been such a wise idea after all. Each separate fragment was now its own miniature mirror. Whereas before there had been only one, now there were an immeasurable number, reflecting and magnifying her fury and horror millions of times over. In seeking to rid herself of what she loathed, she had only succeeded in giving it more power over herself. Feeling as shattered and useless as the bits of the ruined mirror, the Witch turned and stalked away in the direction of her tower chamber, grinding several of the fragments to dust beneath her heel.
You know what to do now. ;D