happy new year lol. i know it's a little late but hey better late than never right? anyway, i've been veeery busy which sucks but you know that's just life. i'll try to put more time for writing in my to do list from now on...
we'll have some more elphaba-melena "bonding time" in this one and probably some more in the next chapter as well but idk yet.
reviews plssss and stay safe!

The World Keeps Spinning On And On

By IceK04

9

Revelations

"You know how much I hate admitting Nanny was right," Melena said when she eventually appeared in the doorway, though she didn't sound that accusing.

Elphaba lifted her head from where it had been resting against the backrest of the chair. "Whatever Master Pinfs told you, he's totally misinterpreting the signs-"

"Of course, he is," Melena took a step into the room. "I take one look at you in that chair and there's no mistaking it: you're perfectly fine."

Sarcasm from her mother's lips was such an unusual thing that Elphaba had to suppress the urge to gape. And while she was still busy controlling her expressions -it was unbelievably harder with this horrible headache she had- Melena stepped closer, eyes narrowed to examine her more closely. She eyed her for a moment, then placed a cold hand on her daughter's forehead, nodding almost to herself and murmuring something that Elphaba couldn't understand over the pounding of her head.

"I told Master Pinfs not to call the doctor," Melena said after a second. "We both know what his diagnosis would have been."

Elphaba's eyes twitched. Even just thinking of the doctor made her uneasy. She didn't have fond memories of him -tried to have no memories of him at all, actually. Because every time she'd met him -had it been due to a sickness of her own or that of anyone else in the household- he'd looked at her with great disgust (which Elphaba, with advancing age, recognized as a malicious… research-bound interest) and, with every word he'd spoken, had made her feel as if she'd been the sole cause of all evil. And, though he'd never said it aloud, he'd always blamed her weird skin condition for whatever illness had crossed either of the Thropp's family members. 'Odd,' He'd always said, bending low to examine Elphaba's face more closely. 'How very odd.' And something in the way he'd said it had made Elphaba feel incredibly uneasy. She never used the word 'odd' anymore -it, strangely (or not?), made her want to throw up.

"Thank you," Elphaba said quietly, and Melena waved a hand as if to say don't mention it.

"Now come," the woman's voice cut harshly through the silence, and Elphaba had to suppress a groan. The words were like knives stabbing her head. "Let's get you downstairs in front of the-"

Though Melena's hand halted right before Elphaba's arm, which she had clearly been planning to take, and went on, rather reluctantly, "…fireplace. Just like Nanny said."

"But-" Elphaba started, but Melena didn't let her finish.

"Not another word of work, Elphaba," she commanded and finally (unfortunately, Elphaba found) reached out to pull the young woman to her feet. "Master Pinfs already offered his help on any urgent matters, thank Oz. And you will sit down and rest and do nothing for a couple of days—don't argue with me, I won't have any of it."

She opened the door rather forcefully, and Elphaba thought for a second it would crash against the wall, eyes squeezing shut as she waited for the inevitable bang. That never came. Instead, there was an impatient tug on her arm, and Melena maneuvered her out the door with what could've been an annoyed sigh.

When they'd just reached the top landing of the stairs, Elphaba, on a sudden idea, shuddered to a halt and raised her tired eyes to look at her mother. "Wait, let me get my books."

Melena turned, eyebrows raised. "Your books?"

"Yes, my books," Elphaba was beginning to get impatient. "What's so strange about that?"

"Nothing," a shake of her head. "I just didn't know that reading now classifies as 'doing nothing'."

"I can't do nothing. I'll go crazy."

"Well," Melena's grip on her arm was vise-like. "I guess you'll have to go crazy, then."

But Elphaba dug her heels into the ground like a stubborn child and- "No."

"'No' what, Elphaba?" Now, Melena was getting stubborn too. And rather clearly so, with a deep line carved between her brows and her eyes turning hard with impatience.

Elphaba waved a hand, exasperated. "You're at least going to let me read, right? Right?"

For a second, Melena paused, eyes fixed sternly upon the bridge of Elphaba's nose. Then, she shook her head. "If I got this correctly, then reading is what got you in this situation in the first place. And I don't think that, sick as you are, reading about the dissection of human and animal bodies is going to help…"

She trailed off, leaning backward as she noticed the sudden change in Elphaba's face.

"You- you snooped through my stuff?!" her hands curled into tight fists, the pounding of rage drowning out that of her headache as she yanked her arm out of her mother's grip. "You read my notes?!"

"Well…"

"You had no right! That- that is my property a-and you had no—right" -she slammed the heel of her shoe into the wooden panels as she staggered back, filled with anger- "to look at them!"

"Then you shouldn't leave them open and for everyone to see in the middle of your desk."

With great precision and surprisingly forceful, she reached out to take hold of Elphaba's elbow -and the girl was too wound-up to be able to step back in time.

"The desk in my office!"

Melena shook her head. "The desk in my late husband's office."

"Ha!" Elphaba burst. "As if you'd ever cared-"

"You know what?" Melena cut her off, sounding rather tired by all sudden or perhaps just entirely too annoyed to put much emotion in her voice. "I'm so sick of this. I didn't read much and what I did read, I didn't understand, so you can stop freaking out now."

Elphaba stared, dumbfounded.

And Melena tightened her grip on the girl's elbow and drew her closer to look straight into her eyes. "I mean it."

Her look was cold and stubborn, and she was dead-serious -and Elphaba wasn't so sure if she could manage to put the same force into her eyes when her knees felt like jelly and her head was spinning, not only from pain but surprise (agitation) as well, but stared back anyway.

"What's with you?"

Melena and Elphaba both started terribly, and as their heads whipped around, the girl had to suppress a groan. There stood, five or six steps down, Shell, leaned against the banister, swinging the foot he wasn't standing on back and forth, and steered at them with his head tilted to one side -and looking not entirely innocent too, found Elphaba.

For a moment, Melena seemed at a loss of words, eyes flicking back and forth between Elphaba and her son. Then, she said, gulping down a deep breath, "Shell, I- there you are." As if having searched for him for ages.

But Elphaba's brother wasn't so easily distracted, it seemed. He leaned closer, hand tightening around the handrail. "Are you fighting again?"

"Fighting?" Melena sounded surprised -if not intrigued- as if the very idea of them fighting was ridiculous.

"Yes, fighting," Shell nodded. "You know that thing you do when one of you starts throwing glasses and books and the other just yells."

Melena looked at Elphaba for help, and Elphaba turned away. She wouldn't be the one doing the explaining here.

"No, we weren't fighting, we-"

"I think you were," he interrupted. "Perhaps I could go and get some books for you to throw… if that helps."

"Yes, please," Elphaba wanted to say, but her tongue somehow stuck to the floor of her mouth, and Melena wouldn't be too amused anyway.

The woman still seemed to be so stunned by the sudden appearance of her son that Elphaba wondered if she'd locked him in somewhere and now couldn't believe he had managed to escape. Somehow that wouldn't be that much of a surprise to her.

"N-no, there's no need," stammered Melena. "Thanks, darling."

So, with a shrug, Shell turned again and jumped down the few steps, bouncing on his heels on the bottom landing for a moment before he jerked into an ungainly run down the hallway to the stairs leading to the basement.

Melena and Elphaba lingered on for a few seconds. Then, the mother tugged at Elphaba's arm and led her down the stairs.

Darling. Elphaba's fingers fanned out against the slope of her palm. Never before had she heard gentle words like this rise from her mother's lips. Never before had she witnessed softly rolled r's and careful d's, a melody, short but sweet, that lingered on in the ears, the mind, and made her heart ache in a way that was entirely foreign to her.

A quick glance to the side, Elphaba wondered if in another world (one in which she wasn't a spawn of the weird and wicked) her nose would turn the same way her mother's did -down in a straight, beautiful line and up at the tip, a delicate curve, a gentle poke in the air. And she was sure that Melena hadn't noticed her surprise at the softness hidden underneath this mask of indifference -if she dared to get her hopes up (risked getting them crushed), calling it a mask. The woman, for some reason, tightened her grip on Elphaba's arm as they entered the living room. Perhaps, Elphaba mused, she'd thought Nanny to be there and Elphaba to run away upon the sight of the woman.

Though Elphaba wasn't sure who she'd be more likely to want to run away from -her mother or her (former) nanny.

"Tea?" Sounded Melena's voice -and surprisingly gently too- as she sat Elphaba down in the armchair in front of the fireplace.

It was so much of a déjà-vu that Elphaba was unable to say a thing for a moment. Then, Melena's face appeared in her line of sight, brow furrowed and eyes full of—what? Worry? "Fabala."

"Yes?" Elphaba tried to snap, but the tiredness in her bones had somehow found a way into her voice, and so, it wasn't much more than a raspy whisper.

"Tea," said Melena. "Do you want some?"

She sounded worried, almost caring. And Elphaba's eyes narrowed into small slits. What was she up to?

Was this some kind of scheme? Some game, played for the sole purpose of having something -someone (her)- to mock and laugh about after?

"Yes, please," said Elphaba, though it didn't sound much like a plead but rather like a command -albeit a weak one.

Melena disappeared. There was the sound of heels hurrying from the room and farther away, and then there was nothing but silence anymore, and Elphaba didn't know how to fill it. She wanted to read. Damnit, she really wanted to read. Or sign a stupid trade agreement or look over another filed complaint. Anything but this. This sitting in front of the warm (hot) fireplace and waiting for the headache to stop.

As a way of distracting herself, Elphaba turned her face toward the fire to watch the flames. They seemed to be dancing to a melody hidden for the human ear, swaying to a song that only they could hear. Blue flames mixed with orange and golden ones, and Elphaba leaned back in her chair and thought that they looked like some kind of strange flowers. Strange but beautiful. Flowers that bloomed only when in groups, that's petals became red and orange on the outsides, but that's buds, hot and blue and worth so much more than anyone thought possible, lied greatly protected in the center of the dangerous flower, protected and kept safe there for the sake of the flowers' survival.

Elphaba blinked furiously. Her eyes had welled from staring into the brightness of the flames for so long, and now tears burned the corners of her eyes. With her, it couldn't have been just a headache, of course. Nothing was ever simple with her, so why should this be?

Elphaba wiped the sleeve of her shirt across her eyes, and instead of shaking her head at herself, annoyed and frustrated, she leaned back and rested it against the back of the armchair. Her fingers danced restlessly, impatiently up and down the armrests. The white of the ceiling above her stung in her eyes just as much as the flames had, though, and so, Elphaba was forced to close them. Only to stare at the insides of her lids and-

No. No, she just couldn't do this. Her eyes popped open again, and she shot upright, hands tightening around the armrests to haul herself to her feet.

But then, Melena appeared in the doorway -curse that woman, Oz, please, do- and all plans of escape were immediately wiped out of Elphaba's mind.

"What is it?" Melena asked, brows knit faintly together.

Her hands were tightly wrapped around the tray she was carrying. There was a teapot on it, two teacups, a small sugar bowl… Elphaba frowned. Two teacups? And no wine glass?

"Is it laced?" She wanted to ask, but something in her mother's face held her back.

"What is what?" She asked instead, not quite as satisfying as the other option probably would've been but still.

Melena came to a halt in front of the coffee table, where she placed the tray on. "You stared at me."

Elphaba tilted her head to look at her. "No, I did not."

"Yes, you did. As if I'd done something to you."

You birthed me. Thought Elphaba bitterly.

"I'm sorry," the words came out rather reluctantly. "I didn't mean to."

The insincerity was more than clear, but Melena either didn't notice it or ignored it. Humans were creatures of habit, after all.

"Sugar?"

"Pardon me?" Elphaba blinked.

"Do you want sugar in your tea?" Melena repeated, words dragging on and on as if she thought Elphaba was a little ditzy.

"Yes, but," Elphaba straightened, twisting her body in the armchair to get a look at the coffee table and her mother, bent over it. "I can do it myself."

Melena's eyes twitched as they found hers. "Or I could do it."

"But you don't have to," the green girl moved to stand up. "I don't know why you're doing this anyway."

"You're sick."

She made it sound almost self-explanatory. But it wasn't—just to be clear. It wasn't self-explanatory at all. Because… this obviously wasn't the first time that Elphaba was sick. She'd been sick numerous times before -more often than she could count, actually. Perhaps she'd just been more prone to illnesses because of the green. She'd had the flu in every variant, from a few sneezers here and there to being laid flow for weeks, months even. She'd spent days bent over the toilet, puking her guts out. And never had Melena done something for her, cared for her, then just because 'she could do it'.

Elphaba reached for the sugar bowl. "Doesn't mean I'm an invalid."

"But," Melena got hold of the bowl first, yanked it away, and looked Elphaba sternly in the eyes. "you need rest."

Elphaba set her jaw. "But," she mimicked. "I am not an invalid."

"If this is your only argument, then you might as well stop arguing right away," the woman was rolling her eyes so hard that Elphaba could only see the whites. "I'm getting bored already."

With an angry glare that probably hurt Elphaba more than it hurt Melena, the green girl sank back into the armchair. "Why are you doing this?"

"Well, if I'm such a pain to you, I could still call for the doctor."

Elphaba bit her lip, and Melena said: "I thought so."

The quiet clattering of the China, metal spoons bumping not-so-gracefully against porcelain, filled the air for some moments. Then-

"Lie down."

Elphaba's lips moved with no words coming out. She cleared her throat (damn, that hurt). "W-what?"

"Lie down," Melena sounded patient, which was a tone so rare in her mouth that it took Elphaba a few seconds to react. When she did, it was with raised brows. "Lie down, keep your feet higher up than your head."

"What's next?" Elphaba turned. "You want me to undress myself so you can examine me? I-"

"Oz, Elphaba, I'm so sick of this!"

The green girl flinched as Melena slammed the teacup onto the nearby coffee table. Hot tea spilled out and poured out over the table. Melena ignored it completely. Her hands made tight fists to both sides of her body, and her chest was heaving as if greatly exerted when really, she was just seething with anger (and frustration).

"Can't you just listen to me for once?! Can't you just shut your mouth for a second and do as I say? Is that so hard? Or -I don't know-" her arms flailed about, no control, no aim, no end. "do you get off on fighting?"

Elphaba backed away, eyes wide. What. The. Hell.

"I'm offering a damn olive branch, here, okay?! Stop being so freaking difficult!"

"And how the hell was I supposed to know that this was an 'olive branch', huh? It's not as if you ever offered me anything, so why would you, now? I'm not being difficult; I just don't understand. I don't understand this, I don't understand you -I don't understand anything anymore. If you felt some great parental need to mother me before, then why didn't you put it to good use when I actually needed it? Why didn't you clean your fucking act up and did what you were meant to do? You -not me!" Elphaba almost said. Almost.

As she rose to her feet, she nearly groaned with the effort to keep the words that were waiting behind gritted teeth at bay.

"You spilled something," was all she said as she plopped down on the couch and raised the second teacup to her lips.

Melena's eyes twitched. She seemed about to explode.

But then, she simply stepped back and whirled around, crossing the room with three long, fast steps. She was murmuring something that Elphaba couldn't understand, but that surely went somewhere along the line of "stupid, abnormal freak". Though Elphaba didn't know for sure.

She sipped her tea in complete silence, trying to let the feeling of triumph drown out that of absolute heard ache, and glared at the ceiling, blinking, when she couldn't.

When Melena returned, it was with a cloth in her hands and a somber expression on her face. She wiped the table in silence, then folded the cloth and placed it on the stone rim of the fireplace. Elphaba turned her face away and sipped quietly on. Perhaps the woman wouldn't notice the way her shoulders were hunched as if in pain or how her eyes had teared up as she stared at her fingers, tracing the rim of her cup.

"I'm sorry," said Melena, and Elphaba couldn't believe what she was hearing. "I shouldn't have yelled."

"I- uh- okay?" The green girl managed to stammer.

She didn't know what else to say.

With her head turned away, she couldn't see where Melena chose to sit down, but she could feel the couch move underneath her and thought it strange that the woman had sat so close to Elphaba's feet. It couldn't have been more than a few inches.

Her brows knit together -which was a huge mistake -and shouldn't she have known before? – because almost immediately, a stinging pain as if someone had put her head in a vise made her gasp. Her fingers trembled as she tried to put her teacup on the coffee table. Thankfully, the cup was taken from her before it could fall. Then, Melena's face, worry -if Elphaba was not very much mistaken- etched in every wrinkle of her furrowed brow, appeared in her line of sight, and a hand was raised to her forehead. A hand that wasn't Elphaba's.

"You're burning up," said Melena matter-of-factly. Her hand still rested on Elphaba's brow. "Perhaps we do have to call the doctor."

"No," Elphaba struggled to push herself upright. "No, really, it's fine."

"Elphaba," her mother sounded more than frustrated. "Clearly, it's not fine."

She moved her hands to both of Elphaba's shoulders and held her down. "If this doesn't get better…"

"But it will."

"And if it won't?" Melena challenged.

Elphaba was -thank Oz! – fast enough to stop herself from rolling her eyes. "It will get better. It always does."

"Mmh," said Melena.

She leaned back and reached for one of the thick, woolen blankets on the armrest to hand to Elphaba.

"'Mmh' what?" Elphaba asked, moving to tuck the blanket around her body.

"'Mmh' nothing," her mother answered. "I was just thinking."

She wanted to ask what she was thinking about but didn't. She probably wouldn't get a decent answer anyway since Melena didn't usually give decent answers (though, then again, Melena didn't usually brew her tea and fought with her over taking care of her), and also, her head was still pounding too much to make talking this much feel comfortable.

Elphaba longed for a good book, her fingers itching with the urge to do something. Still, she stayed where she was, head resting comfortably on the pillow underneath her. Her hands fisted the blanket around her. She was cold, goosebumps forming all over her body and teeth chattering ever so slightly, too quiet for anyone but herself to hear. But she didn't want to raise her voice and break this silence since it was the most relaxing one she'd witnessed in months.

And when she closed her eyes, she could almost will the green away in her mind until she was, but a normal girl, sick on the couch and Melena was but her mother, watching over her, fingers itching with worry, impatience settling in her bones, waiting for the moment the fever would break.

Elphaba kept her eyes closed. Oh, what she wouldn't give for this to become real.

"Hey."

Fiyero's grin was as broad as she'd been able to imagine -and Oz, was she thankful for that. (She didn't like forgetting. Not any better than she liked sickness and doctors and stupid bedrest.)

"Hi," she tried a smile.

They sat on the edge of a cliff, a ledge, and when they turned, they saw the dark maw of a cave opening behind them, teeth of sharpened rocks poking from above. The rock to the sides was covered in the pretty green leaves of vines, and from the delicate branches that peeked out underneath dangled small, unripe grapes, still all green and tight and probably terribly bitter. Also, there were lichens of moss underneath their hands that they had pressed to the ground behind them, and they looked almost like small little gardens. Gardens of fairies if she ever believed in such.

"We miss you, you know," said Fiyero, and she turned her head, lips pursed.

It was a miracle that she managed to understand him this well over the roaring of the waterfall that poured down before them.

"Yes, it's a shame you can't copy my essays anymore, isn't it?" She raised her eyebrows.

"No, no, Elphaba, you don't understand," Fiyero shook his head vehemently. He meant this. "We miss you."

"Do you? Well," Elphaba ran her hands up and down her thighs. "I miss you too, I must admit. All of you."

"It's just not the same without you."

"Mmh."

With silence following so close after, there was finally room for the deafening sound of the waterfall thundering down hundreds of meters. Elphaba squinted as she tried to look beyond the spot beneath them where water met water. But there was no use -it seemed that there simply was nothing beyond.

"Hey, Elphaba."

Elphaba looked up.

"I don't know if Boq mentioned it in his letter," Fiyero wrung his hands in his lap, a gesture very unlike him. "But after Glinda's Ama Clutch died -not right away, of course, but some days after- Madame Morrible approached us—all of us, I mean. Crope, Tibbett, Boq, Glinda and me."

Elphaba's brows were knit tightly together, and she waved a hand at him to go on. And after a second, he did. "She, um, she let us come in pairs and we had to sit down in front of that huge desk, and she asked us a whole lot of questions."

Her eyes clamped tightly shut. She'd feared that something like this would happen.

"What kind of questions?" She asked when her throat didn't feel as dry, but when she turned to look at him, it wasn't Fiyero that sat beside her anymore (and she cursed herself for the sudden ache in her chest, the flames on her lips).

"All kinds of," said Boq, who now sat next to her.

He fisted a bundle of blonde hair and dangled his legs like a little boy (Shell?) would've. He sometimes was that way, and she found it strangely endearing.

"We -Fiyero and I- asked to speak to an investigator instead but she refused to tell who had been given the case of Doctor Dillamond."

"Of course, she did," Elphaba managed to force from a tightly set jaw.

"But there's more, Elphie," he turned, and somehow a hand found its way to her knee. He completely ignored the way she winced at the mention of the strange nickname. "She didn't even ask about the doctor much, she wasn't interested in the work he'd been doing or maybe she just didn't know that we were—are involved. She was only interested in what Glinda had told us of the day Ama Clutch had died."

"The old hag wants to know if you're a threat."

"That might be so, Elphie, but-"

"What did she ask?" Elphaba cut him off. "What did she want to know, Boq, this is important."

Boq mmh-d for a second, tapping a finger against his chin. "Stuff like: 'Since when have you been friends with Miss Glinda?'"

"'Are you aware of the university's policies regarding male and female friendships?'" This time, it was Crope's voice that sounded, and he was clearly rolling his eyes.

"'Did you know of Ama Clutch's illness?'"

Crope had turned into Tibbett, and Elphaba buried her face in her hands. This was all so confusing.

"She didn't ask me much."

At the sound of Glinda's voice, Elphaba -albeit hesitantly- dared to peek through a gap between her fingers. She saw the blonde only in the corners of her eyes but what she did see was more than enough. Glinda sat, ankles crossed in a very lady-like way, and smoothed out invisible wrinkles in her dress.

"I went alone," said Glinda. "Madame Morrible asked it to be like this and since poor Ama Clutch" -she raised both hands to her chest as if in prayer- "died and Nanny was busy guarding Nessa, it seemed appropriate to go alone. She made tea, so I drank it. It wasn't four yet, so it was far off from tea-time, but she'd made the effort and I didn't want to appear disrespectful. We spoke for a long time. Or well, actually, Madame Morrible spoke, and I listened."

Elphaba's teeth dug deep into her lower lip as she waited impatiently for the blonde to go on.

"The tea was delicious."

And she was gone.

Somehow, Elphaba was scared rather than angry. Something had been off about her, and Elphaba didn't like that one bit.

For a while, no one spoke, and Elphaba stared down at the end of the waterfall again. But nothing remained nothing, and she quickly became frustrated by the emptiness.

When she turned her head, she came face-to-face with a metallic blade. And attached to the metallic blade was Grommetik -and Elphaba paled.

"You!" She hastily jumped to her feet -either to attack or to run away. She wasn't so sure. "You did this!"

The blade in the tik-tok creature's hand turned out to be a scalpel, and Elphaba thought she'd seen it before. In Doctor Dillamond's lab. Her eyes narrowed; her heart picked up its pace. Could this be the blade that had sliced the doctor's neck open?

She'd never known tik-tok machinery to be able to talk before, had never heard them talk before, which is why she started so terribly when Grommetik did.

"Oh, deary," said Grommetik, and its voice was that of Madame Morrible. "You see conspiracies in everywhere you look."

It advanced with the scalpel pointed in the air. Or rather at Elphaba's chest.

"B-But it's the truth!" Elphaba cried, stumbling and staggering away. "We all know it is."

"You all know nothing much," Morrible's voice was like a dull knife sawing at the loose ends of her nerves.

The roaring of the waterfall became louder.

"You think you do, but in reality, you're just as clueless as the rest of them."

The tea was delicious.

As a slight breeze stroked through Elphaba's hair, it was as if the wind caught the metallic tik-tok machinery, and Grommetik went up in smoke. In its place stood, moments later, a woman, naked and without shame for it too, black strands of hair reaching almost to her thighs, wild and unkempt and of such fierce beauty that it quite literally knocked the air out of Elphaba's lungs.

From eyes green as the moss on marshland woods, she steered at the green-skinned woman.

"Look," said the woman with a voice so deep and somber that Elphaba shivered. "It's the future."

Her hand, thin and delicate, reached for the vines to her right, and when she blew the breath out of her lungs, it was as if a strange force took hold of Elphaba, wrapped its cold fingers around her shoulders, and flung her into the winds.

Elphaba awoke with a gasp. A curtain of black hair covered her eyes, and she had to pluck them off first before she could glance around. The flames in the fireplace had died and behind barely closed curtains gleamed the night sky in an inky blue.

Before she could make out anything else, Elphaba was already on her feet. She was swaying so hard now that even she couldn't deny it anymore, but nothing and no one would hold her back. On unsteady feet, she hurried down the hallway and climbed upstairs. Not a single lamp was lit, and still, her steps didn't falter once. She knew this house, this staircase, this banister better than she knew her own mind, and darkness was nothing she feared. Though she couldn't deny the itching of her fingers, the panic that spread in her chest like a fire.

Elphaba pressed on, forward, always forward, and only allowed herself to rest when she sank against the smooth wood of the office door, panting with the effort to calm her racing heart and pounding head. Moments passed that she could listen to nothing other than her own ragged breathing. Then, she finally pushed away from the door and went to lighten the lamp on her desk. Green fingers, trembling in panic and hurry, searched for a pen while her eyes were already fixed upon the blank paper in front of her. Pen in her hand, she hastily uncorked her inkwell, dipped the mine inside, and turned to the empty sheet.

Glinda,

She wrote, her hand shaking so hard that the letters almost blended into one another.

Perhaps this has already happened, perhaps I'm too late. If I'm not, remember this: do not drink the tea. Do NOT.

She didn't sign it. Not because she didn't want to, but because something moved behind her. Elphaba whirled around. She knocked the open inkwell down as she did, and cold and wet and blue did the ink spill down her arm.

Something gleamed metallic in the dark.

Elphaba screamed.