A/N: SPOILERS FOR BOOK AND MUSICAL! This is my perspective on what Elphaba might have been feeling and thinking after she dropped through the trapdoor. This is slightly booksicalverse, meaning that Fiyero is dead, but musical because Elphaba isn't. So, here you are:

When I had fallen through the trapdoor, I had had no idea of what awaited me there. I knew that the door was there, but not lay behind it. Water, perhaps; a great underground lake; or maybe a safe haven where I could rest awhile. But it turned out to be neither, and it was not for the best. Either would have been better than what waited for me behind the door. Perhaps even staying with the angry mob waiting for me would have been better.

I looked around me and found that the room was completely empty. There was nothing – no ladder, no shelves, no cozy armchairs. It was an utterly bare, stone room. The ceiling was nearly ten feet above my head, unreachable. I sat down in a corner and stared gloomily around myself. Trapped. I was trapped, cornered.

I screamed my frustration, the walls seeming to close around me. I pounded my fists on the wall until they bled. Then I slumped to the floor in utter despair. "Fiyero," I whispered longingly. I wished he was here with all my heart, but he was not coming for me. Chistery would never find me. The ravens probably didn't even know I was here – those that survived, anyway.

"Liir?" I whispered. He did not know about the trapdoor. He would think I was dead, like everyone else. I shivered. Someone had to know about this place. Someone. Glinda? Had I ever told her? I could not remember. I couldn't remember anything. The room shrunk in around me, so dark and cold and threatening. My prison.

Would anyone care, if they thought I was dead? No. I was the Wicked Witch – no one remained, no friends, no one who remembered when I was simply Elphaba, the strange green girl from Munchkinland. But that was my fault, wasn't it? I had thrown that part of me away to fight an impossible enemy. The Wizard was unconquerable. He had too strong a hold on people's minds. Someone like me, who looked evil in heart and soul, who was strange, and powerful…

I hadn't had a chance.

Poor Fiyero…he had believed in me. Why? He had to have recognized me as hopeless. Just a poor, deluded girl seeking attention. Perhaps that was all I had wanted all along – some recognition, someone that knew me more than as simply "that green girl." I had gotten recognition, but it was certainly not the kind I wanted. I was hated – feared.

A celebration throughout Oz that's all to do with me…

How mocking those words seemed now. They were celebrating, now, certainly. Celebrating the downfall of evil. The downfall of the Witch. The downfall of Elphaba – if anyone even remembered that name besides me, anymore.

I thought of Glinda. She was probably celebrating with them right now. Smiling as she recounted the tale of how silly she was to befriend the Wicked Witch of the West. Laughing with her old friends as she remembered the dance where I had been alone, dancing in that ridiculous hat that I still wore, half as a reminder of everyone that had failed me, and everyone I had failed. Glinda. Doctor Dillamond. Nessa. Fiyero. Him, most of all.

My eyes drooped closed with despairing weariness. Maybe one of them will come to rescue me, I thought blearily. Maybe…

The cold shroud of reality settled around my shoulders as a deep chill set in. Water dripped from the ceiling, remnants from the bucket of water that had been my downfall, in a sense. No one was coming to rescue me. I was forgotten, already left behind by the rest of the world. I was alone, without hope of salvation.

My escape had become my tomb. My eyes drifted closed as despair curled up in my lap and settled in to stay. I stroked it absently. Even if it was my only company, it was better than nothing.

Better than death.

I wish that Fiyero would hurry up and come, was my last waking thought. My eyes closed. The air was thick and heavy, cold as it settled in waves, crushing the breath out of me. I'm so tired. I just want to go home.

Home.