Although this fic is strictly book-verse, I decided to write Elphie's character closer to her musical counterpart, simply because I like that character better. Although, in everything other than personality, she is the same as the book.

This was inspired by Hannah Fury's amazing song 'It Was Her House That Killed Nessarose'. Check it (and her other WICKED ones) out if you haven't already.


Elphaba would never forget the moment she had been told of her sister's death for as long as she lived.


At the time the message arrived she was up in her tower, yet again attempting to attach a pair of wings onto one of her many snow monkeys. Then, all of a sudden Chistery had raced into the room (despite everybody in Kiamo Ko knowing that she didn't like to be disturbed) and handed her a yellowy-brown envelope.

"What's this?" she had asked him. "Why are you bothering me with this?"

Chistery said nothing, instead, turning and exiting the tower, babbling something unintelligible as he went, only making Elphaba silently curse herself at the fact he still hadn't learned to talk.

Abandoning her task for the time being, Elphaba went over to the window seat to read the letter. The immaculate handwriting immediately told her who it was from. Her brother.

Elphaba, it stated simply,

You may or may not have heard about the tornado that swept through Munchkinland recently, but it with sadness that I report the death of our dear sister Nessarose. It has been decided that the funeral will not be held for several weeks, in the hope that you are informed of Nessa's fate and are able to attend the ceremony.

Shell

'Dear sister indeed," she had thought to herself. Didn't Shell know that Nessa had lost her identity, just as Elphaba had lost hers? The Wicked Witch of the West and the Wicked Witch of the East.

'We deserve each other,' she thought sadly. Yet as she had thought of her little sister, she couldn't help feeling a sense of loss. Nessa. Poor, crippled Nessa. Tragically beautiful Nessa, for whom she had cared for all her life. She had felt her body being wracked with sobs.

"Stop it," she had scolded herself. She had never cried before in her life, and she certainly wasn't going to start then. So, to take her mind off the horrendible news she'd just received, she returned to her task with the monkey.


In the end, Elphaba had attended the funeral. And who was there but her old roommate. No longer a bubbly, popular party-loving school girl; she was now Lady Glinda Chuffrey, the perfect picture of society elegance.

But then the news came about the shoes. Those beautiful jewelled shoes that Nessa had been given when she first arrived at Shiz. True, Glinda had enchanted the jewelled slippers for Nessa, enabling her armless sister to walk, but Nessarose had promised them to Elphaba in her will. Glinda had no right to give them to the wretched little farmgirl like she had.


After that, Elphaba began to follow this 'Dorothy' and her unlikely trio of companions down the yellow brick road as they made their way to the Emerald City. She would balance on the wind's forward edge, as if she were a green fleck of the land itself. She didn't exactly know why she was following the little brat around like she was. Revenge, she supposed. After all, it was her house that killed Nessarose.

'But,' she thought to herself sadly, 'that's just the way life goes.'