The crew lingered around the castle for a while, shuffling around listlessly, gathering provisions here and there, and speaking to each other only out of practicality like 'pass the cape Liir' or 'has anyone seen Toto?' and such. So this was her funeral.

The Witch planted herself on a couch for the better part of the afternoon, trying her hand at laziness for the first time in her life. No wait - not in life In…..in death? For the first time in death. Did that sound right? No of course it wasn't right, no one refers to themselves once they're dead. So it was perfect for her.

Liir wandered into the room looking paler than ever, his hands in his pockets and his face, now sharpening with age, blank. The Witch watched him curiously, waiting for him to move, to do something, to say something. But the boy simply stood there like a robot gone out of order.

Useless – no! No she couldn't think that, not today.

"Liir!" called Dorothy from around the hall.

"I'll take the broom." said Liir at last as Dorothy came sauntering up to him like a bright, wide eyed puppy. The Witch grimaced at the sight. "She can be buried with it." He continued.

"But I need it to prove she's dead." Dorothy replied. "What else would do?"

"How about a photo of my screaming, rotten face?" shouted the Witch. "How about that, my little fucking pretty?" It wasn't like anyone could hear her.

"I'll carry it for you." said Liir.

"You're coming with me?"

"I…" He paused. "I'm coming with you. Yes. And I'll carry the broom."

No one bothered to say goodbye to Nanny although the Witch supposed it didn't matter as she'd forget this ever happened in a week, yelling for Fabala to come down from her room and socialize with the monkeys or some nonsense like that. The Witch decided to follow the crew. And when they disband she'll….well what could she do?

She'll figure it out later. There was no hurry, not anymore.

It was Liir who was leading the group. Liir of all people! He led everyone out the front, across the molding drawbridge that creaked every time the Lion, who was the heaviest, made a step. Everyone else hurried ahead, even the Witch. Who knows what would happen if she fell in the moat.

On the road, Brr the grown up Lion cub and the mutt lagged behind with the other two creature-things; the life sized mechanical man and the Scarecrow, both of whom made the Witch's skin crawl. The wind was furious and swept around her skirts like a tornado, as if trying to take her like it took Dr. Dillamond.

"Oh dear, it looks like it might rain." said Dorothy. "You know things look different in the rain, like trying to find your way around at night. What if I don't recognize the way?"

"Then we're screwed." replied Scarecrow and the Lion, Brr stared back at him with a horrified expression. "What? It's simple as that."

It was funny, but the Witch felt no remorse for her death. There was that cliche of unfinished business of course, but that was no longer her problem. All this turmoil and corruption were for the living to deal with, people like Avaric, Glinda, and Cherrystone. And they…well they could all rot in hell!

Although the thought lacked conviction.

At the same time, it was relaxing to no longer have anything to deal with, to drift apart from her responsibilities. Nothing mattered and nothing could affect her – she could dump Dorothy and that mutt off a cliff and come away unscathed or maybe find Morrible's ghost and smack her in her fishy face. Or haunt the Emerald Palace! That would be hysterical! Scaring the crap out of guards in the middle of the night, along with that old geezer of a Wizard.

She grinned at the thought and found herself standing straighter, shoulders relaxed, her hands in pockets. There was nothing to burden her any longer, no reason to beg for forgiveness. Hell, dying had to be the best thing that ever happened to her! She should have done it earlier.

"Was she your mother?" asked Dorothy, drawing the Witch from her thoughts. "I'm terribly sorry to have killed her if she was. I mean, I'm sorry anyway but more so if you're related."

Now there was an example of 'unfinished business'. Who was Liir? This boy that had randomly planted himself in her life? He hardly resembled Fiyero and certainly was nothing like her. He was one her first assignments after she woke up at the Cloister, that much she knew. She had started with him –

"I started out with her." said Liir. "How, as a toddler I came to be among the maunts, I can't say. No one ever told me and the Witch wouldn't talk about it."

Neither did any of the other maunts, as if the boy was the root of some taboo, controversial matter. She tried to ask why they had been placed together, and the maunts avoided her for it. And then she demanded to know why the hell they were all avoiding her for it. She had always asked too many questions, it was what got her into that whole mess to begin with. So began her vow of silence. It was incredibly fitting.

"…and then we joined a party that went through the Kells," continued Liir. "Stopping here and there until we got to Kiamo Ko."

"It's awfully out of the way." replied Dorothy.

"You of all people would know I wanted it out of the way." muttered the Witch, more to herself than anyone who couldn't hear her.

"She wanted it that way. Besides, it's where Fiyero had lived."

"Your father?" asked Dorothy casually. Liir shrugged.

"He meant something to her, the Witch." He pointed out and the Witch flinched internally, surprised. How did he know that? How could he know that? Fucking hell, it must have been Sarima or one of those sisters, gossiping around the halls like school girls while the children lurked around the corner, giggling squeamishly. Who knows what Liir heard? The Witch cringed. This could get awkward.

"But what, I don't know." Said Liir and she breathed a sigh of relief. "I never met him. Can you imagine the Witch pouring her heart out to me?"

"I can't imagine anything about her." replied Dorothy. "Who could?"

And they'd better keep it that way.

The With wondered if perhaps it would be better for her to go her own way instead of following this group of misfits and vagrants. She didn't need to her hear herself gossiped about or what Liir was going to do with himself once he got the Emerald City– hell, he wouldn't survive a month in that type of cooperate – cut throat culture, he was still a boy for Oz sake. And a sensitive boy at that, walking around in her cape like some silly parody of a bat. Who was going to take him seriously? But somehow, she wanted to know what would happen to him – to all of them, Dorothy, Brr, the two Talking Statue things, even the dog. They had had such an effect on her, it was almost a right for her to know what would become of them after they killed her life and then herself.

"Liir, I have no confidence in your sense of direction." said the Tinman politely.

Dorothy looked scandalized at the prospect of being lost. "Nick Chopper!" she scolded. "You're heartless!"

Nick Chopper? That Nick Chopper? Oh of all ironies! Once again, the world had found a way to screw her, even after death! But whatever, it didn't matter. She kept the thought spinning around her head like a mantra, a comforting mantra. It didn't matter, it didn't matter, it didn't fucking matter...

But then why was she still here?

"Ha bloody ha." replied Tinman – Nick Chopper. "And you're an orphan. I'll rust in this downpour. Does anyone think of that? No."

Well one couldn't really be surprised at what happened with Nick and the enchanted axe. Nessarose had been a hard core Unionist. Did they really expect magick to be a strong suit of hers? They should have just shot the man.

"Don't carp, I don't deal with conflict well." said Brr. "Lets sing a song."

"No!" exclaimed the Witch along with everyone else.

"What'll you do once you find yourself courageous – assuming the Wizard grants your wish?" asked the Talking Scarecrow thing. Mindless fool.

Brr shrugged and rolled his eyes. "Invest in the market?" he replied with an uncharacteristic sarcasm. "Join a troupe of music hall buskers?" The Witch snickered at the image. " How the hell do I know? Strike out on my own anyway and find a better group of associates. More simpatico."

"You?" asked the Scarecrow of Nick.

"What will I do if I find myself with a heart?" he scoffed. "Lose it constantly I imagine."

They continued on for a moment in silence, waiting.

"Well Scarecrow, your turn." said Liir. "What'll you do with your brains?"

"I'm thinking about it." he replied flatly and said nothing further.

The Witch didn't want to think of Fiyero, how he might have turned out if he lived to thirty eight, if the Scarecrow resembled that man at all. She glanced sideways at him as he shuffled along with his hands in his pockets, the brim of his hat over his face as he stared stonily forward. He was taller than her, his torso well built with straw although bits fell out here and there. And he had green eyes. Shiny, real eyes with whites.

It was freaky. Those eyes did not belong on the head of an inanimate object.

She quickly turned away.

"Oh Toto!" said Dorothy suddenly. "Where's Toto?"

"He's wandered off to do his business." said Brr, staring at Dorothy the way Liir stared at Nanny making her own funeral arrangements. "Just between you and me, its about time he learned to be private about it. I know you dote on him but there is a limit."

"Thank you!" exclaimed the Witch while everyone else thought it.

"He'll be lost!" cried Dorothy. "He couldn't find his way out of a cracker barrel. He's not very bright you know."

There was a polite pause.

"I think we've all noticed that." said Nick.

"I hate to be obvious." added the Scarecrow. The Witch gulped uneasily, trying not to remember his voice. "But you'd have saved yourself a heap of trouble if you hadn't been too cheap to invest in a leash, Dorothy."

"There he is!" she said and pitched up the slope to a small shrine of Lurine, standing defiantly against the wind and rain that whipped against the statue's face. She stood by and watched as Liir and the crew managed to assemble a tent out of her belongings, spreading her cape over the shrine's roof, using the charred remains of her broom as a pole to hold it all in place. They huddled, squished against one another, squirming for room, shivering.

Were they really planning to wait out the storm like that?

The Witch rolled her eyes. This storm was probably going to last for hours, and she knew what that was like. Cramped, damp, dirt and grit clinging everywhere, skin stinging like a sunburn. The best thing to do would be to go to sleep except only time she had managed that was after she got wasted at Avaric's dinner party.

She sat down in the grass and found a part of shrine to lean against, arms crossed, knees drawn up as she looked up at the raining sky with the fascination of seeing something for the first time. An image flashed in her mind then; a fragment her conscience had forgotten to include during her 'life flash back' when she was dying. She saw herself, sitting exactly how she was now against the steel lockers on the first floor of her old high school in Qhyore, grey, rainy daylight filtering through the windows, children (for they really were children), sauntering by while she watched them critically, scowling the best a fourteen year old could.

"Tell me more about her." she heard Dorothy say, sounding like a child, begging to be read a bedtime story.

Liir said nothing and stared ahead, scowling the best a fourteen year old could while leaning against her broom with his knees drawn up and his arms crossed.