A/N: It's nearly two am, so this may be a bit odd…

Disclaimer: I own nothing but some events and invented characters.

Elphaba:

My veins are on fire and I can't breathe or move or think. I am exhausted, and I am unconscious, but I am not asleep. I am alone with myself, and the thought terrifies me. I don't know where I am, or when, or why; my eyes are stuck closed and I can't open them, and I can't remember where I was or what I was doing before this happened. There was something incredibly important that I had to do, had to find, but I just can't remember.

I'm too tired to remember.

The Wizard:

He came, as I knew he would. He was angry- she had been rubbing off on him.

"Where are they, what have you done with them?" he demanded.

"Nothing," I replied, superficially calm. "I need your help, that's all."

"I won't help you!"

"Oh, but I think you'll want to, with this. Follow me."

He did. I led him to Elphaba's room, where she was tossing and turning violently and fighting the air.

"Oh, sweet Lurline," he gasped, and ran to her side. Predictably, after a moment, his eyes flashed to me. "What did you do to her?"

"Nothing," I answered honestly. "Really, nothing, I promise you. She came in here demanding her children, and then she collapsed. I swear to you, that's what happened."

I could see suspicion dancing in Fiyero's eyes, but his concern for Elphaba far outweighed his care for whether or not I was lying. He turned back to her, and tried to pin down her wheeling arms.

"Elphaba-Fabala-Elphie-Fae," I heard him whisper, "it's me. It's Fiyero. Come back, please."

Her eyelids fluttered, and those otherworldly eyes focused for a moment. "Something," she gasped, "have to find something…can't remember…"

Fiyero gave me a cold look. "Bring our children in here," he said, "if you care anything at all, or ever did, for your daughter, bring them here."

Something in his tone- and in my own long-dormant heart- forced me to obey.

…

Elphaba:

Something was calling me back to myself. It wasn't my name. No, there it was, my name was there, but so was another word.

Mama, please, come back.

And I wasn't hearing it anymore, suddenly, I was saying it.

"Mama, please, come back," I beg. I am eight and feel younger in my fear. But I can't cry, I must be strong for Nessarose. She has to think everything is all right, she can't be scared. But my mother's hand is cold and empty, and I don't want to be strong. I want to curl up in a ball and scream and sob. I want to shake my mother's dead shoulders and howl at her in rage. How could she do this to me, how could she leave me here, how could she? She cared so much about the health of this baby; she threw out her wine and pills and leaves into the bloody muddy red earth. But this time, she died. If I knew what irony was, I would have found this sadly ironic, dramatically ironic, situationally ironic. Situationally is not a word. Who gives a damn? Not me. I stare at my dead mother and think, I will never do this.

I will never do this. I couldn't leave Fala and Liir all alone, not even for another minute. I pulled myself, hard, back to the surface. I forced my eyes open, and when I saw my family I was saved. I pulled all three of them into me, and I was back in this world once again.

But I looked over there heads for just a moment, and I could have sworn I saw a look of piercing loneliness on my father's face before it was replaced by his customary expression of sadistic darkness, and I pushed the thought out of my mind.