(A/N: Hi! Thanks for all the reviews and favorites and for nominations for the Wicked Awards! Thanks so much! Info for this chapter: Melena did not die giving birth to Nessa, she died of some disease a few years later.)

Elphaba sat in her room at her grandparents estate, working half-heartedly on a few Great Kells documents her father had asked her to translate. They were part of a project he was working on of the diplomatic sort, despite his recent overthrow. The room was small and there wasn't a single window, just beige walls with a brown border, a bed and small desk. While the accommodations were nicer than most one would find in the economically unbalanced Oz, the estate was home to much grander, empty and unused rooms which Elphaba had not been offered.

"Come inside, hurry up! Don't dawdle! We have neighbors you know!" her grandmother had hissed at her when she first arrived at the beautiful Thropp Estate, "Now, you are to stay inside. I don't want you running about outside where people can see you. You'll be staying in one of the rooms at the back of the house. You're lucky, save for the closets, it was the only room I could find without a window." There weren't any hugs, kisses, or even "hellos", and Elphaba had not been daft enough to expect such familial normalcy.

Helen Thropp was Elphaba's grandmother, and as Frex's mother, she had never understood why her only son hadn't sent his disastrous excuse for a child to the orphanage the moment she was born. Elphaba's most striking and unfortunately most unforgettable memory of her grandmother was one which she'd witnessed as a young girl; five years old when her grandparents had come to visit for the holidays. Suffering from the common child's insomnia at the time, she'd decided to sneak down to the kitchen for a glass of milk. Instead, she'd found her parents and grandparents, in the midst of an ominously furtive argument.

"She's got no place in the family Frexspar, and you know it. What do you think a thing like that is going to amount to? She's dragging this family in the mud. Think of Nessarose if not yourself!" Helen had hissed, gesturing a hand upstairs to where Elphaba's bedroom was, a disgusted sneer curling her upper lip.

"Elphaba's our daughter!" Melena had snapped back angrily as Elphaba watched with wide eyes as her mother took a threatening step towards Helen. Her small hands had tightened around the rails of the staircase which she had perched on in hiding.

"Your daughter I'm sure." Helen had sneered, "But I find myself rather doubtful that my son could ever produce such a mutinous defilement of nature." Elphaba hadn't understood the implications then, or even the vocabulary, but she did now.

"Mother, that's enough!" Frex had hissed angrily, cutting in front of his wife to stand before his mother, "You've made your point about Elphaba. You don't like her; you think she's a freak. No father wants their child to be an abnormality, but that's what we've got. And she is our daughter and we will raise her as ours. Oz forbid she ever hears the kinds of things you say about her. The way you speak of her, as though she isn't exactly what she is: a little girl, for Oz's Sake!" Her grandmother had guffawed at that.

"We have the funds you know and the people, if that's what you're worried about." It was Elphaba's grandfather, Xavier, who had spoken up next, "We can make this whole thing disappear, quietly and no one will even remember that she existed." At that, Melena's hand had flown to her mouth, stifling a horrified gasp.

"Dear Oz, you can't possibly be suggesting-"

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Frex had roared. Elphaba's eyes had grown even wider watching her father take two quick strides towards her grandfather before shoving him roughly against the wall. Her father's eyes had never looked so dark to her, "We're not killing our goddamn daughter, you fucking maniac!"

"Good lord, what kind of man do you think I am?!" Xavier had choked out, "I never said anything about killing the thing! I was talking about an orphanage!" Before she could hear another word, Elphaba had fled, running back to her room as fast as she could, tears falling freely from her eyes, the loud voices of the adults downstairs still volleying shouts back and forth.

"Elphaba?" Elphaba was startled out of her thoughts by her father, who knocked softly on the door before coming in, "Hard at work I see, you've always been the smart one." he winked at her and she smiled back.

"I probably got it from mother, you know." she said, mockingly.

"You're probably right." Frex waved a hand, "Come on, it's time for dinner, I'll meet you down there." Elphaba marked a few more documents before heading down to the dining room. Everyone else was already seated, her grandmother at the head of the long, thin table, her father and Nessa on either side, and an open chair for her next to Nessa. Her grandfather was away on business.

"Late again, haven't you got any manners?" Helen sent a vicious glare towards Elphaba as she walked in. Elphaba yanked out her chair with a loud ruckus, sending a withering glare towards her grandmother.

"On the contrary, I was just respecting your wishes. If I had arrived on time you would have had to suffer my presence that much longer." Elphaba snapped, not caring that her father was sending her a disapproving look. Her grandmother seemed to not have a rebuttal, and as the food arrived via wait staff, she turned her attention to the others.

"So, have any of you heard the rumors?" she asked ambiguously. Frex rolled his eyes, attuned to his mother's grievous obsession with gossip. Elphaba's eyes followed suit.

"No I haven't. I'd ask you not to tell us, but I know you will anyway." Frex sighed in a bored tone.

"Well," Helen began, ignoring her son's remark, "I'm sure you've heard of that Master Avaric, you know, the one from the Gillikin?" Helena asked, taking a bite of her food casually. Elphaba stilled, she had tried so hard the past couple weeks to not think about Master Avaric, or any of those she'd left behind, especially the King. She nervously glanced up at her father, his face creased into a frown at Avaric's name.

"Oh yes, I've heard of him," he said, his voice thick with disdain, ", a disgusting philanderer; a womanizer of the worst sort." Elphaba couldn't help the small wince at his words.

"My thoughts precisely." Helen agreed, casting Elphaba a significant look, "In any case, I heard that he and the recently widowed Countess Freemont have been staying with King Tiggular this summer, she and the King being in a quite serious relationship, you must know." Frex's eyes snapped to Elphaba, who was nervously wringing her hands under the table, her supper forgotten.

"You steered clear of that filth, I hope." he said, clearly only hearing the first half of Helen's sentence.

"I…" Elphaba didn't know what to say. She couldn't say that she'd never spoken to Avaric, because her grandmother obviously knew that she had, "...Avaric's not really like you say he is." she murmured quietly.

"Excuse me?" Frex's silverware came down on his plate with a loud clink. Out of the corner of her eye, Elphaba could see her grandmother's lip twitch upwards suspiciously.

"It's just that, I don't think Avaric is as bad as you say he is, he's actually-"

Frex did not wait to hear the rest, "You mean you became close enough with this man to bypass formalities?" he asked in a low, frustrated voice, his head falling to his hands, "Elphaba, he is a worthless womanizer, how could you possibly be so dim as to fall for that act?"

"It wasn't like that." Elphaba said quietly, regretting her slip instantly. She decided to ignore, for now, the attack on her intelligence in lieu of Avaric's honor, "Master Avaric and I were just friends, that's all. Friends are allowed to address each other informally, last I checked."

"Oh I'm sure the philanderer awarded himself generous liberties with what he called you." Helen said nonchalantly.

"He addressed me as nothing but my given name." Elphaba hissed angrily, shooting a glare towards Helen.

"Oh, I'm sorry, then perhaps it was the King whom you allowed to deride you with disgustingly intimate pet names." her grandmother sneered. Elphaba blanched at that, completely caught off guard.

"I beg your pardon?" her heart began a frenzied ascension. Frex looked towards his mother with a mixed gaze of confusion and hostility. Helen leveled Elphaba with a cold, calculating gaze. As their eyes met, Elphaba knew in that moment, that she knew. Her grandmother knew. What exactly she knew, Elphaba could not say, but the overwhelming dread that seemed to sink through her like sand, told her enough.

"Perhaps you heard Frex, about the ball King Tiggular and the Countess Fremont recently held?"

Elphaba's body slackened and the room around her seemed to drown in blurriness. No, she couldn't possibly be bringing that up, she couldn't possibly know that.

"No, why do you ask?" Frex asked, his voice edgy. Elphaba could see by the look on his face that he was trying in his head to figure out the correlation of Helen's last comment to this one.

"Oh, no reason really. I just thought you might have heard of the scandals. The evening was practically a minefield of impropriety and infidelity. It was civil savagery."

"Elphaba, why, you were still at the castle when the King threw the ball, did you go?" Nessa suddenly brightened up at the news of a ball and she looked towards her sister, enthusiastically hoping for first-hand gossip.

"I…" Elphaba found her throat to be incredibly dry and her vocabulary drastically diminished. She had been ready to deny it, but a look from her grandmother and she knew she couldn't, "I only went for a little while." she told Nessa.

"Oh, how exciting!" Nessa clapped her hands together, oblivious to her sister's distress.

"There was a young woman there, I don't remember her name, but my friend Lady Rydel, saw her, told me she caused quite the scene. Perhaps you, saw her Elphaba." Helen's eyes were trained steadily on Elphaba, watchfully anticipating the key sign of realization on her granddaughter's face. Elphaba's hands fisted beneath the table and she gritted her teeth angrily, trying to hold back a slew of unladylike comments.

"I don't remember anything happening that caused a scene."

"Well, she was quite the slut," Helen said abruptly, "The young woman I mean." she added, as though anyone was confused about whom she was speaking.

"Mother!" Frex hissed, appalled at his mother's suddenly vulgar vocabulary. Elphaba flinched at the word, her eyes falling from her grandmother's malicious gaze.

"She spent the entire night on the arm of Ambassador Charles, only to hit him across the face when he tried to revoke her advances. When she ran out of the ball, Masters Avaric and King Tiggular both went after her, the three of them disappearing for a disgustingly long time. When they finally did return, they were disheveled and the woman, wasn't seen again. Everyone's guess was that she collected her money and left, if you know what I mean." her grandmother's lip curled in disdain as her gaze swept over Elphaba, and as she opened her mouth to speak again, she waited until her granddaughter was looking directly at her, "How could you forget something like that?" Elphaba was quiet, unable to speak or even to look away from the spiteful glare her grandmother held her with.

"How in Oz was such an indecent character as her invited?" Nessa asked, seeming excited but also disgusted by her grandmother's story.

"Mother, that is a disturbing thing to hear." Frex said matter-of-factly, "I pray this is idle gossip. To think that the entirety of a Kingdom rests in the hands of a man who doesn't have the decency to resist the temptation of sinful harlots, is indeed frightening."

"A sentiment, I must say, I agree with." Helen said coolly, "Elphaba, now that I've refreshed your memory, perhaps you could tell us more. Despite the grossness of what happened, we all have perhaps concerning appetites for more detail. Please, from a first-hand witness."

Elphaba felt her throat constrict and her heart beat loudly in her chest, of painful reminder of the King, and his consistently intensifying affect he had on her heart. She knew what her grandmother was playing at now, she knew that she wanted to torture her. She'd shown her now what she thought of her, and what her family would think of her when they found out. It was as though she was finally getting a piece of what Oz thought of her and it made her feel like trash. It felt suddenly as though that night, the gossip and the disaster had cheapened everything. Everything she'd shared, with all of them, the children, Avaric…Fiyero, it had all been stripped down and reduced to particles of scandal and disgust. Was that all it ever was? A sordid game of propriety and shame? It was what people like that did, people like Helen and Lila, counts and dukes, ambassadors and…kings. Everything she had ever felt had been taken; twisted into cheap gossip and stories for friends. That night, Elphaba had realized she'd fallen in love, something which had been a feeling before it was a scandal; which had been a happiness before it was a sin.

"Well, Elphaba? Don't you have anything you'd like to share?"

Elphaba was relieved from her thoughts by her grandmother, who was prompting her continuance with an unyielding spitefulness to her expression.

"Please," Elphaba whispered, her voice coming softer than she had planned, "Don't do this." she pleaded softly, her eyes looking imploringly towards Helen, "I..."

"Elphaba, are you alright?" her father queried, his brow furrowing at her sudden paleness. Elphaba didn't answer and the room was serenely quiet for a moment.

"She's fine." Helen said suddenly with a snap, finally turning her gaze from Elphaba, "We'll talk later." she said in a clipped tone, setting back to work on her dinner. The other's slowly followed suit, Elphaba sat numbly for a moment, unable to move before shoving her chair back and bolting from the room.

For the next several days, Elphaba refused to talk to any of them. She didn't attend meals, grabbing only snacks from the kitchen when she happened to pass it and she locked herself in her small room, not letting anyone in. She spent a lot of time sleeping. The hours she spent in bed were verging on extreme, but she could care less. She had done well those first two weeks. She'd kept busy and kept him out of her head, but after that disastrous dinner, thoughts of the King had become inescapable. It felt like torture now, to remember moments with him or even with the children. It took her some time to admit it, but she missed him. She missed them all. She missed the lazy afternoons with the children and Master Avaric. She missed the irritated look the King would get when dinner became too loud. She missed his somehow charming way of insulting her…and even more his charming way of complimenting her.

Very few times, she would think about the last time she saw him, how he'd drawn her near to him, ready to tell her that everything the Countess suspected was true. Elphaba wished she could've heard him say it, and she wondered infinitely of what would have happened had she stayed. But then again, she hadn't stayed, and she'd never heard him say the words. It could have all been in her head, the heat, the longing and treacherous rejection in his eyes when she'd pushed him away. Even Avaric, even Lila, even the children; they all seemed sometimes as though they were only figments of her imagination, characters from someone else's story, wisps of smoke barely visible in the summer breeze.

A knock on her door shook her gently from her thoughts, but she didn't answer the visitor. A moment later, there was the clicking of the lock and the door swung open, Helen standing in the doorway, a surprisingly calm expression on her face.

"I said we'd talk later, its later." she said.

"I don't want to talk." Elphaba murmured, not bothering to turn around to face her grandmother. She continued to sit at her desk, mindlessly translating more ancient runes from the Thropp estate's unnecessarily extensive library.

"You either speak to me, or I'll have a word with your father." Helen said, her tone nonchalant, but unshakably authorative. Elphaba's eyes closed in frustration, her hand going to her head as she finally turned around.

"There's nothing to talk about. You clearly know everything you need to know. It doesn't matter what I say, does it?"

"I'm giving you a chance to explain yourself, you should be grateful for that." Helen said shortly.

"Grateful?" Elphaba scoffed, turning back around in her seat, picking up her pencil before skimming more ancient runes. There was a tense silence in the room, Elphaba hoping that if she ignored her long enough, she'd go away. Instead, it prompted Helen to interrogate her.

"Did you sleep with him?"

Elphaba's hand tightened on her pencil and she spun around angrily.

"For the last time, Master Avaric was a friend, if you even know what that is, I wouldn't want to assume you've ever had one." she snapped. Her grandmother seemed unfazed except for a slight pursing of the lips.

"It wasn't him," she sneered, "I was referring to." The room descended into silence again.

"I didn't sleep with anyone." Elphaba finally said.

"Then why did you leave, if not for the shame of adultery?" Helen asked.

"I missed my family, you excluded of course." Elphaba muttered. When Helen didn't say anything, Elphaba looked up at her, surprised to see an uncomfortable look cross her face.

"Were they hurting you?" she finally asked, her face twitching as though she didn't know the type of expression to accompany her query.

"What? Oz no!" Elphaba said, surprised by the question, "Why would you ask that?"

"The night you arrived, you had a bruise on your cheek."

Elphaba's mind reeled back to the courtyards outside, during that disastrous conversation with the Countess. She winced at the memory.

"Oh, that was the Countess." she said absentmindedly.

"The Countess Fremont?" Helen asked in surprise.

"We got into an argument."

"At the ball."

"Yes."

"About the King?"

"….yes."

Another moment of silence passed between the two, both contemplating what had been revealed and heard.

"You did the right thing." her grandmother finally said, "Leaving that is. Don't regret it for a moment, it was the right thing." Elphaba nodded, suddenly feeling numb.

"I had hoped so." she said quietly. Her grandmother nodded once more, before standing and walking towards the door. Just before leaving, she turned around.

"You may have loved him, and he may have loved you…but it never would have worked. He belongs with women like the Countess. He's a King after all. It would have been selfish of you to stay in his life." Helen paused, sighing deeply, "Elphaba…don't look back. Move on, you did the right thing. Let him be with his Countess. If he hasn't forgotten you by now, he soon will. It's time you let him go as well. I…I won't tell your father."

(A/N: Thanks for reading! Happy Valentine's day if I don't update by then!)