(AN: Hearkening back to Another Journey, we see another cut-away and another of what happened with...well, you'll see.)

Murder of Conscience

Her eyes, brown with flecks of gray, opened upon the void, the world of light and darkness and living rock, the astral plane of Chaos. She had never been here before, and yet it was not wholly alien to her. She had walked more or less in this world every time she crossed over: from Oz to Middle Earth, from Middle Earth to the cross-roads of the Custodian, from there to Midgard and so on. Even when it had been very brief, she had seen this world as a flash of violet and darkness in the barriers of each world.

She tried to remember all that had happened up until she appeared here in. She remembered being attacked, then trailing Dorothy, the one who called herself Pyrrha, for some time until she came to the battlefield. There she saw what happened between brother and sister, and came to the realization that she was never Dorothy to begin with. She saw them destroy the sword, then walk away from the other one. The last thing she recalled was a burning blade and an eye, like the Eye in the Ring, looking out from the midst of the burning shadow. Then she was here.

And she was not alone.

One by one, she saw the figures of those she had known in times past appear before her. There was the old Goat, hands and feet bound in irons, a forlorn look upon his shaggy, bearded face. There was the young woman with reddish-brown hair, clad in black, now standing up on her two feet. Then there appeared another figure, one which she had only seen briefly in her nightmares ever since Midgard. She knew the face: pale and fair, save for hideous red blotches here and there, like someone had poured drops of fire slowly onto his face. His hair was black as night, and a wicked gleam was in his eyes.

"Well done," he said. "I'm very impressed. You've turned your back on your friends and family and taken up the Sword of Heroes."

"He's lying!" the woman said.

"We're still here," the Goat added. "That means you haven't turned your back on us."

"What is this?" she snarled.

"Elphaba, don't you know us?" the younger woman asked. "It's me, it's Nessarose."

"But you're not dead," she replied.

"No, I'm not," she returned. "But we're bound by blood. Wherever we are, you will always carry a part of me with you."

"I've had enough of this sentimental bulls..."

"Yes, that's right," the tall, dark-haired man said in a deceptively sweet voice. "Who need her? She's alive again, she's got her legs. You have no responsibility to her anymore. You have no responsibilities."

"What about to the weak, the hopeless, the innocent who have been treated with injustice?" the Goat asked.

"Oh, she never cared about you."

"Let Elphaba speak!"

"He's right," she replied. "I never cared about the Animals. I knew that if people accepted the Animals back into society, there'd be nothing left to stop them from accepting me. You all were just a means to an end."

"Ha ha ha ha, that's right, you old goat!" sneered the dark-haired man. "You have no power here anymore, so piss off!"

Slowly, the image of the Goat bent even lower, then vanished all together. The red-haired woman was livid.

"Elphaba!" she shouted. "How could you say such things! The Animals have been your life's work since the beginning!"

"Of course, because she just wanted everyone to love her, didn't you?" he turned to Elphaba and mocked a pout. "Oh, poor me, nobody loves me, nobody understands me, so I'm just gonna be mean to everyone so they'll all look at me."

"Shut up..." Elphaba panted.

"Admit it, you were weak!"

"Shut up..."

"You've always been weak, and you'll always be weak..."

"Shut up!" In one quick motion, Elphaba reached out and grabbed the half-giant by the throat.

"No, stop! What are you doing?"

"Do you think I care about you?" she asked him. "Do you think I care about your fake gods or your end of days? Do you think I want to become your slave and use the Sword to free you?" With her other hand, she thrust inward into the bowels of the giant.

"Does it hurt?" she sneered, then removed her hand and watched him disappear into a pool of black blood that melted away. She then turned her eyes to the red-haired young woman.

"Elphaba, what are you doing?"

"What I should have done long ago," she replied. "Get rid of you!"

"Elphaba, just listen to me!" the image of Nessarose held up her hands. "You're not well. It's the Sword! It's affecting your mind, you wouldn't do this normally."

"Would I?" Elphaba roared. "For nineteen years, I've had to look after you, clean up after you, hold your hand because you're too weak. All the while you shoved it in my face that Father loved you over me, that you were his favorite. Well, Father's dead, Mother's dead, thanks to you! Yes, that's right. I didn't kill Mother, you did!"

"Don't say that!" Nessarose cried.

"Shut up with the tears, b*tch! Nobody cares if you're hurting or not because nobody loves you, nobody! Boq didn't love you, Glinda used you, Father only loved you to spite me..."

An emerald hand, covered in black blood seized Nessarose by the throat while another one, hideously engorged and deformed, with huge claws and knobby, spiky growths upon it, impaled itself like a grim torture device into her stomach.

"And I don't love you either!"

As the body of Nessarose faded, Elphaba saw that the void faded around her, until she was back in the world as she knew it. They were all gone: Nessarose, Dr. Dillamond and Loki, the manifestations of her own consciousness. There would be nothing more to stop her now, no limitations, fears or faiths to keep her from doing whatever she wanted to do. It didn't matter anymore that she had only cared about herself in the past. There were no more maxims, no more laws or rules that said what was right and what was wrong. All there was was power, and she had enough power that whatever she said or did would be so.

She looked down at her right hand, hideously deformed where it had gripped the hilt of the blade. It's eye, the fiery inferno, the gate into its own void of endless hunger, looked back up at her.

(AN: Well, it had already been said more or less, so why not? Don't worry, more story to come in the next chapters.)

(Tumblr is where fandoms go to die. I know, many of you readers probably have a tumblr and would be offended at that remark, but seriously, tumblr might have given my love of Wicked a fatal wound from which it is still trying to recover [perhaps in vain]. Obviously, I decided to get rid of the poisoned blood of Hvergelmir [Loki's black blood from The Land] so that Elphaba's actions are her own. The exchange with Nessarose was mostly for you, readers, because it seems that I'm the only one who likes Nessarose, so I thought you'd love to see Elphaba tear apart your most-hated character)

(Also, yes, the dark-haired guy is Loki. Please, please, PLEASE, for the life of me, do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT ENVISION LOKI AS TOM HIDDLESTON FROM THE AVENGERS MOVIE! I think he looks like Data from Star Trek The Next Generation, and I think that his interpretation of Loki was horrible. The Loki of Norse mythology is more like the Joker from The Dark Knight: a harbinger of chaos who does bad things just for the fun of it. The one in The Avengers movie is a whiny, angsty little...well, I think you can get the picture. Sorry for the rant, but I'm sick of Avengers Loki.)