A/N: A short, abrupt little thing about Elphaba's passion and drivenness, and where it comes from. Kind of a motivation for Defying Gravity. Also, the one part is true: My English teacher gave The Intruder an F. Anyone who would like to protest, drop me a PM, I'll be sure to pass it along to my personal Madame Morrible. Thanks so very much.
Disclaimer: I don't own it. If I did, I'd go wave it in my teacher's face, laugh hysterically, and flip her off.
Ever since she was two, Elphaba Thropp has been feeling overwhelmed.
Imagine:
"Mama? Where Mama?"
"Your mother is dead."
"Mama?!"
"She's gone. She is never coming back."
Oh. And by the way, it's all your fault.
Her two year old mind struggled with this: if she had done it, mustn't there be some way she could bring her mother back? The little logic she possesses tells her this; she has recently learned that just because she can't see something, doesn't mean it no longer exists. Also, if something (like a little green finger) can fit in somewhere (like the lattice work of a porch chair), it can also come out.
So if her mother can disappear, she can also reappear.
Right?
Wrong.
She thinks this must be when the other thing started. But she doesn't know. Her father certainly won't share with her the history of her freakish powers.
And since she couldn't bring her mother back, she owed Nessarose a mother. An extraordinary one. To make up for what she had done. So Elphaba took it upon herself to take care of her sister. Very good care. Even when she felt like her little four year old spine might crack under the pressure.
And then school. And to try and make her father love her, and also to satisfy the demands of her own nature, Elphaba had to be Elphaba the Brilliant. Had to do everything better and faster. And when she took, once, an assignment in her Literature class beyond its limits, the teacher, who had never liked the green girl, failed her. F for effort. F for extraordinary.
Elphaba couldn't get it out of her mind. She cried a little, she raged, she pounded, she paced, she broke pencils to assuage the temptation to break something more valuable. She was possessed.
And she felt as if she could never be good enough. Never make up for it all. Never succeed.
But.
She was never one to give up. Never. Single-minded to the point of recklessness. She would succeed, more than succeed, if just to stick a long green middle finger in her teacher's face. In her father's face. In the faces of everyone who taunted her, who didn't believe in her, who never gave her her due.
Oh, how Elphaba wanted that due. And if she couldn't have that, she would have revenge. She would show them all.