A/N: This is just a random idea I had.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Stares burn.
They burn as surely as fire, or water, but they burn from within instead of without.
Elphaba wondered idly if it was stares that had burned away her soul. She sighed and turned around, her too-wide black boots deepening the impressions they had already made in the wet emerald grass.
She was standing in the middle of Shiz's central green, completely alone. Everyone else was inside. It was ironic, she thought, that they didn't want to venture out into the wet reborn world because it was uncomfortable. She was the only one water could really hurt, and she was the only one outside.
She made her way back to the door of Crage Hall, pausing at the threshold to look back out at her world. The rain-soaked, red brick buildings, covered in ivy, which like the copious trees had glimmering orbs of water hanging off of its leaves. The wet grass, so vibrant it seemed to glow with rich green radiance. The dark purpled sky. Elphaba's favorite thing was the world after a late spring storm.
Sighing, she pushed open the heavy wood door with a gloved hand. Inside, she removed her wet boots lest she slip on the stairs and ran to her room in stocking feet.
Glinda was out, it took her only a moment to realize. She had the place to herself. Elphaba smiled briefly, surprisingly pretty, and perched herself beside the window with a book. But the world outside, gleaming with promise, would not let her focus. Finally, with a sigh, she opened the window and leaned out.
Birds sang and bustled around, diving in and out of the trees populating the university's campus. The air was cool and cold on her face, eliminating easily the trace of a headache she had begun to develop. A breeze blew smoothly, directly into her face, making her laugh out loud for a moment. And below her, several girls walked the path around the dormitory. Words floated up to Elphaba; they were discussing her. Freak, and stuck-up, and inhuman were only a few. Elphaba's smile died on her lips and she withdrew, flushing darker, into her room. But she didn't close the window.
After a moment, after the girls had gone, she approached it again, cautiously. Church bells from a nearby chapel rang out on the wind. Elphaba ignored them. Slowly, cautiously, she trailed the tip of a long green finger through the water droplets on the windowsill, her face contorting with the pain. But she smiled through it, knowing that when she had finished her fingertip would glow red as an ember, and when it blistered it would be a dark pink right at the very center- just like everybody else.