"A person," Elphaba repeated in a disbelieving whisper as a small smile, a genuine smile, appeared on her face and tears traced a path down from her eyes. "Maybe… maybe I could… be… be that."
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Chapter Fifty-One: The Story
Elphaba couldn't sleep. She hadn't been able to for days. It was driving her to the brink of insanity. Every time she tried to sleep, to get the blissful rest she so desperately needed, her past would haunt her. Memories of her father and her terrible torment lurked in the back of her mind, just beyond her reach until she fell asleep. She could no longer bury the pain away. She could no longer lock the memories behind the ten-inch steal door in her mind. It had been dragged from the depths and shadows of her brain and there was no longer any way for her to ignore it.
The pain was choking, suffocating. She sat on her bed, curled up in the corner where the two walls met, clutching her legs to her chest. She hadn't gone to class for weeks now and she vaguely wondered how far behind she really was. For some reason the fact that she could fail did not bother her. She had begun to realize that there were things in life that were far more important than her schoolwork. If someone had said that to her at the beginning of her days at Shiz she would have scoffed at them.
Not anymore.
She talked. Fiyero and Glinda would sit, cross-legged, on her bed. Sometimes they would hold her hands. Sometimes they would hug her. And other times they would just give her space if they sensed that she needed it. Her words would tumble out of her throat in rushed, jumbled messes. Often times they made no real coherent sense while other times they were so clear and full of pain that she wouldn't be able to speak for hours afterwards.
She often scratched and clawed at the scabs of the healing wounds she had afflicted on herself. Many of them were deep, deep enough to scar. She had refused to go to the infirmity, refused to get stitches, and Fiyero knew why; she wanted the scabs to pick at. They would stop her though. Whenever they caught her in the act they would stop her. Slowly, gradually, she stopped altogether. It didn't bring her relief anymore. It didn't help her to release the torment inside. Her pain was now too great to discard through her own blood.
It took seven days, exactly a week, for her to spill her story. She found herself repeating words, memories, over and over again as the pain refused to dull with just one telling. Fiyero and Glinda spoke very little. And if they did it was to ask her if she was hungry or thirsty. She drank only warm milk and ate nothing. Her body shivered with cold from the lack of food she had inside of her to keep her body functioning properly.
Finally, on the seventh day, when she had spoken the last of her story she raised her gaze from the bed. She looked at Fiyero and Glinda for the first time since she had begun her telling a week ago.
She smiled. The first smile in a long time, maybe even ever, that truly reached all the way to her eyes.
