Untold
Introspection, Elphaba-centric.
Summary:We´re pawns in a game of chess, figures to be manipulated and controlled.
Set immediately after the book.
Disclaimer: "Wicked" doesn´t belong to me.
Life is never just black and white.
Because it´s never just life.
There´s more to it – more than anyone can imagine, more than I imagined. People are born, grow up and mature even though they don´t know why or for what reason. They marry and bear children and work and suffer and still, there´s no reason, they have no aim. They fill in the emptiness with substitutes.
Nessa searched for the answers. She held power over an entire country, ruling with her iron faith and witchcraft. She failed.
Glinda searched for reason. She was beautiful, she was helpful and good and everyone loved her. She failed.
I searched for the difference. I was intelligent and doubtful but I didn´t aspire to rule or to lead. I failed.
Where´s the answer to life? Where´s the reason that explains why some people are like they are and some aren´t? Where´s the difference between black and white, between good and evil?
There´s never only black and white.
There´s grey and blue and thousands of different shades. The ones that pretend to be good end secretly are evil – actions supposed to lead down to the white result in being black. The ones who want to be evil – to be black – think and live and feel things that never are going to fit into the black end of the scale. Like Nessa. Like Glinda. Like me.
Now that it´s over, I can see it clearly: We were manipulated from the beginning.
I always thought I´d defeated Madame Akabar by not becoming the Adept of Munchkinland, the Witch of the East. Glinda was the Witch of the North, Nessa the Witch of the East, I was the Witch of the West, but not because she made me but because I chose to be. But there are no choices in life. Her deception – her manipulation – was what made me become exactly what she wanted me to be. She never thought I´d actually take my grandfather´s title. She knew telling me what to do would result in me doing the entirely opposite, so she told me what I wouldn´t do to make me what she wanted me to be. If anyone ever deserved the title "Wicked Witch", it was her.
I wish Glinda was here. Glinda, my Glinda, not Galinda the arrogant, conceited girl or Glinda, the Witch of the North.
More than Nessa, whom I raised, she was my sister, my best friend. I have regretted not talking to her the day we parted ever since I died. My last thoughts were filled with darkness – with rage, hate, revenge. And sadness. This girl – Dorothy – she was so like me, so similar jet so different. She was loved by everyone while I was hated by everyone, but she was strong, so strong. Maybe she even was stronger than me. I know the Wizard sent her home and I´m happy for her. But Dorothy, like us, was a pawn in a game of chess, used and abused mercilessly. She was just another figure like Glinda, Nessa and me – dispensable.
I couldn´t look at Glinda when I met her the last time – her beautiful, bright, heavy, horrible dress, her blond hair, her sweet face. She belonged to me once. There was a time when we could talk to each other, when she would use her brain and smile naturally. She´d take my hand, not caring if anyone saw, she´d laugh and try to appear bold even though she was nervous. That Glinda would never have stuck the shoes which belonged to me to a little girl´s feet, she´d never have tried to use a little girl to overthrow the Wizard. She´d never betrayed me by not telling me the truth.
Her truth being: I have the same aim – I try to rid this world of a despot, I try the same you tried for your whole life but failed again and again.
My truth is: I love you, Glinda, even if you betrayed me and lied to me and didn´t tell me the truth. I love you even though you used me – because the role you forced me in was the one I acted in my whole life. The Wicked Witch of the West, your enemy, a hateful, spiteful, angry woman. The woman who failed in everything she did.
Now the Good Witch of the North is the last one of Madame Akabar´s adepts left in Oz.
The Wizard is gone, the Wicked Witches are gone, and chaos and fear reigns in Oz. The yellow brick road is being destroyed, only the last hundred meters to the capital are left. Munchkins and Quadlings and Gillikenese are waiting, waiting for someone to calm their uproar, to take them and lead them to peace once again so they can work and suffer and murmur how much they feel abused by the authorities once again. They´re just people, and people need someone to lead them. The ANIMALS, I fear, are lost forever. How incredibly funny and sad that something I fought for during my youth and which is lost now forever only fills me with sadness, nothing more.
What will you do, Glinda?
What can you do? You´ll have to save a whole country this time, and there´s no one to fight against, no Wicked Witch left, no evil Wizard. It´s just you and the people and you know you can´t be the one who leads them, that´s not your character. I almost – almost – wish I could be there. I´d like to help you. Maybe there would be the possibility of us both working together, for once, just being together. I don´t believe in souls – I never did – but now I´m dead and I desperately hope there might be a opportunity for us both to meet again. Who knows.
But to all the people who were by our side, who listened to our tale, there never will be a chance to know. They were just spectators, a passive audience, never able to interfere, not wanting to interfere. They´ll remember the Wicked Witches of the East and the West and the Great Wizard of Oz and the Good Witch of the North. And, of course, the little, strong, weak, charming child with her wonderful shoes, bravely wandering on, helped by the Good Witch, killing the Wicked Witch and freeing the people and finally, returning home. But did she ever return? Who says she wasn´t taken somewhere totally different? We never saw her actually returning to the place she came from.
As we never saw what happened to the Good Witch or to the country she was trying to save.
Thus, the last part of the story remains untold.
