Wicked Witch of the West

by Jarlaxle Baenre

A piece of Wicked the musical... in story form. Mostly follows the script. It's a oneshot for now, but I might extend it.

A/N: I saw Wicked. Finally. After about two years of avidly listening to the Broadway cast recording, imagining it performed, and basically obsessing over it, I've finally seen it. So naturally, I had to write a fic. As of now it's a one-shot that takes place in Act II, scenes iv and v, when Elphaba comes to the Wizard for the second time. It's during "Wonderful," if that helps. It mostly follows the script and sort of the song… sorry that the characters occasionally speak in limericks. I might extend it later. Maybe.

This is for Mackenzie because, of the two of us, she's been waiting longer than I have to see Wicked, and she hasn't. She deserves to be able to go. Good luck, Kenz.

The room was just as I remembered it, exactly the same as the first time I had been there. There was the red carpet leading to the enormous golden head at the end of the long hall. It ascended a small flight of steps before it reached the platform, upon which rested what most of Oz believed to be the Wizard. In reality, the Wizard was a man, one who controlled the gargantuan talking head while hiding behind the curtains in the back. Nope, nothing had changed.

Nothing except me, that is.

I'd entered this room last with the mentality that now—after all these years—I was going to be accepted rather than shunned, celebrated rather than despised, loved rather than hated. I labored under the illusion that I, Elphaba Thropp, would finally stand side by side with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz and not be judged by my green skin.

Ignorance is bliss.

I warily walked into the room. Judging by the fact that the head did not start booming at me, the Wizard was not in his usual place. I crept up to it, rapped it with my fist, shouted at it for good measure, and finally came to the conclusion that I was alone. Or maybe the Wizard just wanted me to think that I was. I leaned my broom up against the gold-plated metal and crept cautiously towards the curtain, wrapped my fingers around the draw cord, and yanked hard. I let out a sigh; it was empty. Boy, am I paranoid.

With good reason, it turns out.

"I knew you'd be back!"

I jumped and whirled around. There stood the Wizard, holding my broom. He was short and rather plump, with thin, graying hair and light-blue, innocent-looking eyes. I snorted. He was anything but innocent. "Give that back," I demanded, snatching at it.

He jumped away, holding it out of reach. "Hear me out," he implored. "I never meant to harm you."

"Well, you have," I spat vehemently. "You have harmed me."

"I realize that, and I regret it. Elphaba—"

"See!" I interrupted angrily. "There you are. You've hurt me." I turned and stalked back towards the curtain. "I'm setting those monkeys free. And don't try to interfere or call your guards."

"I'm not calling anyone," he said, shrugging. "The truth is, I'm glad to see you again."

I turned back around suspiciously. "You're a really abysmal liar," I told him.

He shrugged again. "Honest. It gets pretty lonely around here. And I know you must get lonely too."

"You don't know the first thing about me," I snapped, turning towards the curtain again.

"Oh, but I do," he said softly, smiling that obnoxiously smug sort of smile that says very clearly that he knows something you don't. "I can't explain it exactly," he continued, sauntering towards me. "You know what I mean? Elphaba, you've been so strong through all of this. Aren't you tired of being the strong one? Wouldn't you like someone to take care of you?"

"Oh, shut it."

"Please, Elphaba, help me start again."

"Don't you think I wish I could?" I demanded, whirling on him again. I could feel the tears burning behind my eyes, but I wouldn't let them fall. Not in front of the Wizard. I continued bitterly, "That I could go back to the time when I believed you really were wonderful? The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? Nobody believed in you more than I did."

"Oh, my dear child," he said softly, turning from me and sinking into a sitting position on the stone step. "I never asked for this, you know. I didn't… plan it in advance."

I snorted. "Right."

"No, really," he assured me. "I was… it was all luck. I never saw myself as… as a Solomon or a Socrates. I knew who I was. I was a traveling salesman, one of your… dime-a-dozen not-so-wonderful guys."

"Then how come you're the Wonderful Wizard whom everyone venerates?" I said the Wonderful Wizard part mockingly, hoping it would cut him. It didn't, of course. "Somehow I doubt that you had nothing to do with any of it."

He stood slowly and walked over to me. I flinched as he put his arm around my shoulders (it didn't help that I was taller than he was), but he held on tightly, and I didn't draw away. "Oh, Elphaba," he moaned. "If only I could make you understand. They made me wonderful. They needed someone to believe in, and I gave it to them. They wanted someone who would make everything perfect. See, I never had a family of my own, since I was always traveling, and I guess I just wanted to give the citizens of Oz… everything."

"So you lied to them," I said dryly, pulling away from his fat arm.

He held up his hands defensively. "Only verbally."

"Oh," I said snidely. "Yeah, that makes all the difference."

"Besides," he said quickly, "they were the lies they wanted to hear." He paused and looked at me with a funny glint in his eye. "Elphaba, where I come from we believe all sorts of things that aren't true! We call it history."

I blinked. "What?"

"Look. A man can be called a traitor or a liberator, depending on who you are. A rich man's a thief or a philanthropist. Is one a crusader or a ruthless invader? It doesn't matter what he really was, it matters which label persists throughout the ages."

I gave him a funny look. "That's not what matters. What matters is what their true intentions were."

But he wasn't paying attention to me. He was descending the stairs, holding his arms out wide. "They called me wonderful, so I'm wonderful! In fact, it's so much who I am, it's part of my name!" He turned, letting his arms drop. "Let me help you, Elphaba, and I can do the same for you. They'll call you wonderful, too! Doesn't it sound great?"

I couldn't lie. "It sounds… wonderful," I admitted. Then I realized what I was saying. "But that doesn't change the fact that you're lying to the people of Oz!"

"I'll stop lying," he said quickly. He held up his hand. "On my honor."

I looked at him suspiciously. "And you'll clear my name?"

"Of course."

I folded my arms and seized him up. "Alright," I said, "I'll accept your proposition."

He looked as though he were about to hug me. I put up my hand. "On one condition."

His face fell. "Clearing your name and making you famous isn't enough?" he asked, looking very crestfallen.

"You set those monkeys free," I demanded. "Then I'll do as you ask."

He considered it for a moment, then stuck out his hand. "Done," he said.

"Then do it. Do it now."

He swept past me and into his little control booth. I folded my arms and tapped my foot impatiently. "Well?"

"Hang… on…" he grunted. "Lever's… stuck."

There was the rough sound of metal grating against metal, and I turned around to see a large section of the wall behind the head slide aside. Another lever clicked into place, and the enormous metal grate that kept the winged monkeys captive slid aside with a sound that indicated it was greatly in need of an oiling.

Almost at once, they were everywhere, flying, bounding, swinging out of their prison, free at last. "Go!" I shouted. "Fly! You're Free! Fly! Chistery! Chistery, you're free, isn't it wonderful?!"

Most of them were out of the cage by now. I glanced inside and noticed something curious on the floor. It looked like a monkey, lying shivering under a sheet. "Go," I said softly, approaching it. "Go, you're free…"

The Wizard had emerged from his booth. He stopped short when he saw me walking towards the monkey under the sheet. "Wait, Elphaba, stop—"

But it was too late. I had already torn the sheet off of the Animal.

It wasn't a monkey, winged or otherwise. It was a goat, staring up at me with big, blank eyes, quivering. I was stricken. Past the lump in my throat, I whispered, "Dr. Dillamond?"

"Elphaba—"

"No, it can't be," I stuttered, stumbling away from him. Those eyes, those haunting, blank eyes stared up at me.

"Elphaba, we just couldn't keep letting him speak out—"

I ignored him. Cautiously, I crept up to the goat. "Dr. Dillamond?" I whispered. "Don't be afraid. It's me. It's me, Elphaba!"

I kept expecting to hear a reply, hear his comforting, reassuring voice tell me that it was all some sort of cruel trick, but I didn't. All I heard was a bleating, "Baahhhhh!"

"Doctor, please, Doctor. Don't you remember me? Elphaba?"

Again, that noise. "Baahhhhh!"

"Can't you speak?"

"Baahhhhhh!"

I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. They fell, splashing onto my dress and into my hair. I hadn't cried in a long time, not since I learned that the tears didn't wash the green color away. But I couldn't help it now.

I stood up shakily and turned to the Wizard. My voice was deceptively calm. "We have nothing in common. I am nothing like you and I never will be and I will fight you until the day I die!"

I screamed the last word, and it echoed through the hall. He took a shaky step back from me. "Elphaba," he stuttered, "please, listen—"

"No," I whispered vehemently. "Never. I'm going to kill you…"

I lunged at him, but he dodged past me and into his booth. Then, for the first time that night, the giant golden head came alive.

"Guards!" it thundered, practically blasting me off my feet. "Guards!"

I started to run.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I was standing beside—or leaning on, rather—the door frame of the entrance to the Wizard's hall, examining my fingernails. As Captain of the Guard, I should have been alert, scanning the corridor for any signs of "subversive Animal activity." I should have been standing erect, facing forward with my gun straight.

Lately, I hadn't done anything I was supposed to do.

At first, the thought of finding her was all that had sustained me from day to day. She's out there somewhere, I told myself. She wants you to find her. I searched. I swear, I turned all of Oz upside down in the hunt for her.

Apparently, she didn't want to be found. And slowly, I had started giving up hope.

For my men, it was a reason for celebration. No Elphaba meant no Wicked Witch of the West, the nightmare that haunted both their sleep and their waking hours. The more time that passed since she had been seen, the less of a chance she would show up ever again.

It was that thought that slowly killed me.

Which was why, when I finally found her, I thought I had finally gone mad.

The booming voice from inside the room shouted angrily, "Guards! Guards!"

I didn't know what he could possibly want; as far as I knew, no one was in the room with him. Then again, I hadn't exactly been vigilant in making sure there was no one in the room with him. It was very possible that while I was in my self-absorbed little world of self-pity that someone had slipped past and attacked the Wizard.

I flung the door open and charged in there, two other guards close behind me. My gun was pointed directly at the back of the figure standing there, facing the golden head. The figure's back was turned. "Halt!" one of my guards shouted, advancing slowly.

"Are you alright, your Ozness?" I asked cautiously, still keeping my gun trained on the other person's back.

At my words, however, the person in question whirled around. "Fiyero!" she gasped.

I stumbled backwards as though hit by a physical force. I was face to face with the face that most people in Oz hated, the only one that I loved. "I don't believe it," I whispered, taking a step back. Surely I was hallucinating. After all these months…

She was walking towards me. "Oh, Fiyero, thank God, I thought you were—"

"Silence, witch!" I shouted. I couldn't think of anything to do but to keep up this charade. If my men knew that I wanted to kiss the witch instead of kill her, they would've mutinied on me and killed both of us.

One of my guards was walking forward suspiciously. "Er… there's a goat on the lam, sir," he said hesitantly.

"Never mind that," I snapped. My mind was working furiously. "Go fetch me some…"

I've heard her soul is so unclean, pure water can melt her…

"Sir?"

"Some water," I said decisively.

"Some… water, sir?"

"Yes, some water!" I shouted. "Are you deaf? You heard me, as much as you can carry. Both of you."

"Er… yes sir. Sorry sir."

As the two guards left, I strode towards the golden head. Elphaba looked liked she had been crying. "Fiyero…"

"I said silence!"

The look of pain that flashed across her face cut me a thousand times deeper than my words had cut her. I strode behind the head, yanked back the curtain, and pointed my gun at the little man behind it. "Hello, your Ozness," I grinned evilly.

He saw me. Then he saw my gun. "No, no! Please!"

I seized his robes and dragged him out from behind the curtain, careful to keep my gun trained on his head. "Don't make a sound, your Ozness, unless you want all your guests to know the truth about the Wonderful Wizard of Oz." I turned to the woman standing halfway up the steps to the platform. "Elphaba, I'll find Doctor Dillamond later. Get out of here."

As usual, her stubborn obstinacy wouldn't let her leave. "Oh, Fiyero, you frightened me." She crossed to me and embraced me tightly. "I thought you had changed," she whispered. Then she kissed me, gently.

I pulled away, unable to bear it. I knew I shouldn't be hugging her, kissing her, loving her, not when I was engaged to another woman, but it was all I wanted to do for the rest of my life. "I… I have changed," I said softly, my eyes pleading with her to understand.

A door behind me opened. I whirled around to find myself facing the one whose trust I was betraying by kissing Elphaba. Glinda.

"What's going on?" she asked, taking in the scene before her. She spotted Elphaba. "Elphie! Thank Oz you're alive…" She crossed to her, even omitting her usual flounce, and embraced her warmly. "Only you shouldn't have come," she whispered. "If anyone discoverates you…"

"Glinda," I said past the lump in my throat, "you'd better go."

That's when she noticed where the end of my gun was. Namely, pointed straight at the head of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

"Fiyero," she said weakly, "what're you…"

"Please," I begged her, "just go back to the ball."

Glinda was looking desperately between me and the Wizard. "Your Ozness," she finally managed to whimper, "he means no disrespectation. Please understand! You see, we all went to school together…"

She kept talking, making up excuses. At that point, my mind made a spur-of-the-moment decision. "Elphaba," I said, removing the gun from the Wizard's head and taking her by the hand. "We have to go."

Glinda's eyes snapped from the Wizard's face to mine. "What?" she whispered. "What are you doing?"

"I'm leaving with her," I answered matter-of-factly, trying not to think about all the pain I was causing her.

"What are you saying, Fiyero?" She looked stricken, and her eyes traveled between me and Elphaba. "You mean all this time… the two of you… behind my back…"

"No, Glinda!" Elphaba said desperately, reaching for her hand. "It wasn't like that!"

Glinda withdrew sharply from her friend's touch.

"Actually," I interjected, "it was. But it wasn't… Elphaba, let's go."

It looked as if it was just starting to sink in for Glinda, and the look on her face killed me, a look that reminded me that I had indeed betrayed her—what's more, I had betrayed her in favor of her best friend.

"Let's go, Elphaba," I whispered, tugging on her hand. "C'mon."

The door seemed miles away. I heard Glinda shout something after us, but we didn't stop to listen. We only had one goal in mind: get out of the Emerald City.