So Anyway
Summary:
So anyway, I'm leaving. I thought you'd like to know.
Disclaimer: Ya'll know I don't own Wicked. However, I'd just like to add that I also do not own the brilliant musical that is Next to Normal, either, nor do I own the song that inspired and lends its title to this piece. Some of the lyrics to the song are included (verbatim or slightly reworded) in the dialogue, so know, if you recognize them, that they did not originate in my only moderately creative mind.
A/N: Yes, this story was deleted and reposted, due to a certain review from a certain user (more the user, not the review itself). I'm sorry if that has inconvenienced anyone, but I felt that was the course of action I needed to take.
Enjoy So Anyway!
out :)
When he'd gone to pack his bags, he'd realized how few possessions he actually had left.
He had his atrocious silver uniform, which he'd quite symbolically left crumpled on the floor, a few precious mementos that he'd salvaged from the Shiz days, and enough clothes on his back to get him far, far away. And he had Rosy.
Really, all he had was Nessarose. She'd made sure of that. She'd also made sure that she had him, and that was all that mattered; that was why everything was crumpled like his atrocious silver uniform; that was why he ended up standing in her chambers that night, a virtually weightless suitcase in his tremulous hand, saying,
"So anyway, I'm leaving." He didn't see her breath hitch. "I thought you'd like to know."
He didn't see her breath hitch because his was labored to the point that he could practically view his own heavy respiration in the air. His bones were rattling under his skin; his muscles were collapsing and he could hardly stand. He could barely hold the suitcase that meant absolutely nothing and was feather light in his hand. It was the weight of it all that was crushing his gall, and yet the weight of it all that was keeping his feet planted firmly on the ground, defying her, leaving her, in the most impulsive act of his life.
"I know you're going to keep…trying," he said. And it took every ounce of him not to mention the Munchkinlanders, his family, the people's oppression. How she was going to keep not trying, but tyrannizing. But this wasn't about Munchkinland; this was about him and them and them only. His suffocation. Their suffocation.
"I can't stay here," he said, "clearly. We'd both go mad."
She hadn't spoken yet.
He tried, for a moment, to look at her as the despotic autocrat she was to the rest of the province. He tried to see her as wickedness incarnate, as her cruel and domineering, manipulative and downright nefarious persona, with her black eyes and her throne of a wheelchair that consumed innocent space next to the chaise her twisted form lied upon.
He tried to see her as his Rosy, his dark, sweet, special Rosy, the only thing he had left, really. He tried to see her as the lachrymose and so fascinating Governor's daughter with the smooth hair and the stunning face and the strange, somehow common clairvoyance of a perpetual observer. His confidante, his counterpart, his—
He tried, but neither option offered him courage or even solace. Neither option was entirely rational. He couldn't even look at this woman, who was curled up on the chaise, so thin and withered, so ugly, so gorgeous.
He felt so disillusioned, and his body wouldn't stop quivering.
"So anyway, I'm leaving."
He gulped.
"I guess that you can see."
He inhaled. Exhaled.
"I'm going to try this alone for a while. I don't know how it'll turn out; I don't know because I've never tried it before, but I need to try." And as he continued, his voice grew steadier and the layer of sweat on his skin began to dry. The weight that was holding him down, the weight that he was holding, and the burden of it all, began to lift, and he began to lift. He wasn't even thinking of Glinda, his stupid schoolboy fantasy that had always lifted his spirits, or of this woman who sat inexplicably frozen before him. He was thinking of himself. He was thinking for himself.
Boq smiled when he said, "I'm going to be free."
The choking noise startled him, because it thwarted his newfound little sense of internal liberty, and because he didn't know monsters could cry.
But Rosy was crying, undoubtedly. His Rosy was crying. He didn't like that. It didn't bring him joy to see her cry.
Who was she? What did she need from him? He'd never wanted to hurt her; he'd only wanted to help—he'd only wanted to be kind.
He only wanted to be good. But—
"—Nessarose," he forced himself to utter, allowing his thoughts to manifest themselves in speech at last, "I can't keep…standing beside you, waiting for you to start to fall down so I can pick you back up again. I can't do that."
He whispered, "You'll never get to know what solid ground feels like at all."
Her jaw dropped in a moment of absolute, uninhibited truth that paralleled his.
His initial reaction was pity, but it soon only prompted him; all of the tension was threatening to escape from him, whether he approved of it or not. "You can't keep believing that you can make me—that we can make this work—that it will work at all…" Boq looked away and closed his eyes; he couldn't see her anymore.
"It makes me feel the fool to know that's not true," he stated softly, and it was the last sentence he let himself expel with such control, such restraint—the following were exclamations, outcries—he made himself jolt with the sheer volume of his speech, which used to be so diffident in nature, so benign; even when awkward, he used to be timid, and now—
"We tried to call romance what anyone else would call dysfunction!" he vociferated. "We were in so deep—we were so tangled up in it that we didn't even know it was our fault in the first place. We lied so much that we forgot which lies we'd told when and if we'd ever even been honest at all!"
And he let it just linger there for a moment; he let it permeate her and let it be absorbed into the air. "It's true that it's hard," he said finally, slowly, "to tell the dancers from the dance."
He tried to miss it when she all but lurched forward, her fist muffling the sounds being emitted from her mouth and her arm wrapped about her shaking torso, but he was all too aware of her reaction, because he remembered dancing, too.
He remembered dancing.
He remembered letting the circumstances manipulate him, letting her manipulate him unintentionally; he remembered giving in; he remembered lying to her.
He realized that he'd probably never stop lying to her, but he thrust that into the back of his mind.
"I'm done with letting chance…take me," he said. "I'm going to take a risk, for once. So anyway, I'm leaving."
He laughed and cried at himself. "It's that or stay and die."
She looked as if she were near death, by then; her face had taken on a ghastly pallor; her eyes were sunken in. She was slumped against the back of the chaise, her expression closed in abnegation, yet open in defeat, for he'd just battered her. But he could have set her free, if she only understood.
He'd never stop lying to her.
He had to lie to her.
"I loved you once, and I know you still love me."
Keep lying.
Lying.
Lie.
"I loved you once," he said.
Lie.
Lie.
Lie!
Or just…don't.
"I love you still," he said. "I know."
He'd…lied. Of course he'd lied again.
But he—
It doesn't matter, he told himself. Now she'll let you go. It doesn't matter whether you've told her the truth or not, because either way—
"It's time for me to go."
You're not lying to her, he thought, finally. You just told her the truth.
You're lying to yourself.
You just told her the truth. You just said something so true, so wrong, and now—
Go.
Go, and don't look back.
"So anyway," he said, "Goodbye."