By the time Elphaba had returned to the room, Nanny had gone. Glinda was still asleep, but she looked better, and Elphaba supposed that's the most she could hope for at this point.

She sat back down in the chair and now faced it fully to the slumbering blonde. Oh, how beautiful she was, even in this state; and how pained too.

Glinda, though having more life in her cheeks, still looked as sorrowful and hurt as she had when Nanny and Elphaba had tended to her wounds.

And it was her fault, this she knew without a doubt. She could just imagine the awful things this wonderful woman she had the audacity to call unfaithful must have been thinking about her.

She had been the unfaithful one. She had been the one to bear a child. She had been the one who left…

"But things are different now," Elphaba softly said, holding onto Glinda's hand. "Perhaps I'm foolish, too far gone in all of this; but I want you. I want you and our child, a home, and nothing else."

And what sort of home could you make for Glinda the Good? A voice that sounded disturbingly like Morrible hissed in the back of her mind. She shuddered. A shack out in the wilderness, the dirt for your floor, hollowed out logs for your china? Are you so stupid that you think that would satisfy her? She, who has lived in mansions all of her life; she, who is married to one who could buy her everything she's ever dreamed of?

Elphaba held her head. "Shut up."

You are nothing.

Elphaba covered her ears and screamed, "SHUT UP!"

The voice went quiet, but the words had burned into her mind.

For a long, long while Elphaba sat in the silence, watching the love of her life breathe in and out in her deathly sleep. Then there was a crash, and Elphaba quickly sprang out of the chair to the window. She watched a disheveled and scared Nor fly wildly around the courtyard… on a broomstick…

After running down to the yard and managing to help the girl down, who cried and ran away as if the enchanted thing had done something awful to her, Elphaba looked down upon the broomstick.

A thought occurred to her, and she looked to the east. To Munchkinland, where the Munchkins worked in their fields and raised their children unaware of the outside world; where her sister Nessarose governed over them.

It took her a few minutes to make her decision. She looked up at the window to the room where Glinda slept. She hated asking for help... but she would do anything if it meant she could have a safe and happy life with Glinda and their child.

"I may not be able to give you a mansion," Elphaba whispered, "but I could give you a decent home. I could..."

After several hours of bickering with the broom, she lifted off and made her way east, to pay her sister a visit.

Authors Note: So, as you can see I have taken this story a bit more away from the book; expect to see a little bit more of that.