The Land of What-Might-Have-Been

by Straightjacketed

After spending so many years wishing that things had been different, what happens when, halfway through their final meeting, Elphaba and Glinda find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the worst of all possible worlds? AU.

38. Nightmares and Cabin Fever

A/N: *ahem* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGH!

Sorry, just had to get that out of my system. It's good to be back at long last, ladies and gents: it has been bloody horrible over the last couple of months, in no small part due to the fact that I lost all my progress on this chapter AND the next, and had to spent the last month either writing it all over again or just trying to fix the avalanche of technical problems that's descended on me. So, if I can give any constructive advice at all to my audience, it's this: beware of using Word on an Ipad - it will only lead to suffering. Suffice it to say, I was in a bit of a gloomy mood when I finally got around to rewriting this damn chapter, and you may notice that the tone of the chapter follows my mood in many ways - but then, it's not as if the events of this chapter inspire merriment and joy, is it? Long story short, I can only thank you for your patience, and hope I don't suffer any further technical setbacks.

Meanwhile, your reviews did indeed give me strength; in fact, over the last few weeks of frustration, I'd say they were probably the only thing keeping me from going completely librarian-poo.

Calliax, rest assured I'll be giving Glinda and Elphaba some good moments together this chapter, and though it maybe a slightly slower chapter, I can only hope the emotional intensity remains intact.

Nami Swann: I'm glad the autopsy stirred the right emotions, inducing the perfect mixture of rage and revulsion - don't worry, Elphaba will have her revenge, and she will indeed get to slug the Empress one, but that's for the next couple of chapters. Oops, spoilers!

Ichibayashi: It's great to hear from you again, for as I've said many times, I love your long reviews. I certainly can't criticize your absence, given how long it's been since I last updated - I'm just glad you're back. Rest assured, the last chapter and this one have us once again reaching the upper reaches of the roller coaster, and we're about to enjoy a hell of a plunge; I hope you enjoy it when it arrives.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wicked is not mine. Wicked would not take this long to update.

20/11/15: Corrected typos and made necessary adjustments to redeployment time.

---

The dream is always the same.

She's standing in the middle of a vast empty space, apparently alone: the world around her is a blur of wildly-shifting landscapes, most of them too hazy and inconsistent to be recognized; from time to time, she vaguely discerns split-second glimpses of cornfields and forests, but they are gone in an instant, absorbed back into the maelstrom before she can process their arrival. And they are soon forgotten in the face of the figure slowly materializing in front of her.

He's slumped in a rickety wooden chair, apparently unaware of the shifting terrain around him; his head is bowed as if shame, his arms dangle limply by his sides, and his long legs are almost crumpled beneath him. But long before he looks up, Elphaba knows who he is: who else would have that familiar silver mask at their feet?

The Champion looks up at her with a knowing smile, his eyes luminous and gleaming with energy despite the blood now oozing over them, for along with the wounds that finally killed him, his body still bears the surgical incisions inflicted on it over the course of the autopsy: his bare chest is dominated by the hastily-sealed tear running across his stomach and through his sternum, an ugly red and black scar marring the unearthly perfection of the flesh-porcelain layering his torso. And his skull… she'd wanted to look away when Kiln had opened the Champion's brainpan, but the desire to know had all but nailed her eyelids open and frozen her in place – and even if she had been able to avert her eyes, her imagination would have still told her everything she didn't want to know. And so she finds herself looking down at the all-too familiar crater sliced into the dead man's skull, still disgorging its foul quagmire of blood, tenderized brains and ruined mechanical components.

The Other Fiyero Tiggular, once known as the Empress's Champion, is very dead indeed.

And yet, he's still looking back at her, still smiling as though nothing could possibly be amiss – as if his lifeblood isn't slowly cascading down the back of his cratered skull, filling the air with the smell of old pennies, burnt circuitry and roasted meat and…

Not for the first time, Elphaba thinks of the inviting blue pill that had been sitting in her hand less than fifteen minutes ago. If only she'd been weak enough to swallow that pill. If only she hadn't been stubborn and resentful. If only hadn't tossed it down the sink. One dream pill and she wouldn't have had to deal with this nightmare: no, she'd been cruising merrily through Alphaba's memories, watching her other self slowly delve into the flood of bureaucracy her new kingdom ran on. But here she is, out of her other self's memories and back in her own nightmare-clogged subconscious.

"Do you know where we are?" the Champion whispers. The question is always the same, always uttered in the same incongruously casual tone, always murmured through the same pair of bloodstreaked lips.

It's just a dream, she tells herself. Just a dream. It'll be all over in a minute. I'll suffer for a minute, wake up screaming, and then forget all about it until bedtime… and then I'll toss the damn pill down the drain again, because the Mentor doesn't need Alphaba's memories, I don't need the pills and I can live with these nightmares. I can live with these nightmares. I can live with these nightmares.

"No," she replies sadly – as she always does.

"Do you know where we are?"

"Not even remotely."

"Do you know where we are?" His tone is more insistent this time, almost demanding.

Elphaba sighs. "I know this is a dream, alright? What the hell do you want me to say?"

Normally, the dream ends here: the Champion vanishes, the shifting landscape dissolves back into the void, and Elphaba wakes up to another day under the watchful eyes of her self-appointed caregivers/bodyguard.

But this time, the dream continues; this time, the Champion shakes his head and whispers, "Perhaps he knows?" Raising a blood-splattered hand, he points somewhere over her shoulder – at someone behind her.

Slowly, Elphaba turns – but long before the first lock of honey blonde-hair slides into view, she already knows who'll be sitting behind her. After all, in a dream like this, who else could it be?

And sure enough, it's Fiyero – her Fiyero, just as he was on the day he was murdered. True, Elphaba wasn't there to witness his death and she never saw the full extent of his injuries, but she's spent far too long imagining the tortures inflicted on him in that cornfield, and all her morbid imaginings are on display here and now: the man she loved now wears a mask of ghastly black and purple bruises, his distinctive features having been relentlessly battered and fractured almost beyond recognition by his torturers; his jaw has been broken, his nose is a crushed and bloody mess, and his cheekbones have all but crumpled under the onslaught; for good measure, his forehead has been split open just above his left eyebrow, and blood is slowly oozing from a wedge-shaped cut deep enough to expose his skull to the air. And while the rest of Fiyero's injuries are mostly hidden by his blood-sodden clothes, Elphaba can already tell that his limbs have clearly been fractured in over a dozen places, having been left jutting out at sickening angles… and, as he leans forward in his seat, Elphaba notices the knife-like shard of bone protruding from his right sleeve, having torn clean through fabric and flesh alike when his torturers broke his arm.

Fiyero's bloodied lips quirk into a hideous mockery of a smile, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth. "Do you know where we are?" he asks.

At this point, Elphaba would have given anything in the world to look away; but her eyelids are frozen open, and her body refuses to respond to her desperate pleas for action. So she can only stand there, heart pounding and her eyes wet with tears, hoping against hope that she'll wake up soon. I can live with these nightmares, she tells herself, lying all the way. I can live with these nightmares. I can live with…

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Failure," replies Elphaba, almost automatically.

"Oh really? Why is that?"

At first, she can't answer: the words stick in her throat like shards of broken glass. But something in Fiyero's bloodshot eyes spurs her onwards. "I failed you, didn't I? I had the Grimmerie open in front of me, and I could have saved you! I could have transformed the guards into badges, turned their weapons into to snowflakes, teleported the bastards into the middle of the Deadly Desert – I could have teleported you to Kiamo Ko, I could have teleported the castle to you! I could healed your wounds, made your skin as hard as iron, or given you any one a million different enchantments that could have gotten you out of there alive. But I failed; I lost control and you slipped away. If I'd been faster, if I'd been braver – enough to turn back and face the bullets – if I'd been better, I could have saved you. But I failed… and that's why I'm having this nightmare, isn't it?"

There's a dreadful pause, as Elphaba struggles not to cry. But then Fiyero's smile broadens, and he slowly tilts his head back to reveal the wound that finally killed him – a throat slit almost from ear to ear. Maybe the guards had executed him out of spite when they'd realized he wouldn't talk, or maybe one of them had decided to put their dying victim out of his misery.

"No, Elphaba," he whispers hoarsely. "This isn't a nightmare at all. It's a welcome."

And suddenly, the indistinct background begins to resolve into concrete shapes at long last, and Elphaba finds herself staring out at a vast graveyard of mossy, weather-beaten headstones and near-featureless statues, broken only by the distant hulks of mausoleums and monumental family crypts. It's almost impossible to guess the time of day, for the sky is hidden behind a colossal vortex of dark clouds, but in any case, it's pretty clear that there are no names on the gravestones; decades of neglect and bad weather have long since erased their inscriptions, but each one has been marked with a distinctive-looking emblem that erosion hasn't quite succeeded in removing – a tall, pointed hat identical to Elphaba's.

"This is your new home," Fiyero continues. He's sitting on a tombstone now with the Champion perched atop the grave next to him, looking for all the world like Fiyero's long lost twin brother – or at least, he would if it weren't for the height difference.

"This is where you belong," says the Champion.

"What?"

Fiyero smiles, and wordlessly raises his right hand: clutched between the useless remains of his fingers is the knife that did the final honours, still oozing with thick arterial blood.

A split second later, he's in motion, and Elphaba can only gasp in shock as the flat of blade slides across her wrists as Fiyero slowly forces the knife into her hands. Even covered in steaming blood, it's as cold and merciless as the onset of winter; looking down at the blade in her hands, Elphaba swears she can see frost crawling up her arm, colonizing her veins and turning her blood to ice.

"You belong with us."

---

Elphaba's eyes shot open.

Heart hammering, she clawed for a handhold on the waking world and hauled herself upright, still half-dreaming, still half-convinced that the knife would be ready to descend on her again if she didn't escape first. Even once she'd had a chance to take a breath and take stock of the fact that she was awake at long last, it took almost a full minute for her to struggle through the awkward process of remembering where she was and what had happened over the course of the last twenty-four hours.

Then, as her heartbeat gradually slowed to a rough semblance of its usual pace, she finally recognized the room around her. At long last, Elphaba sighed, partly out of relief but mostly out of sheer exasperation: all things considered, she'd have been much happier if she'd awoken to find herself back on the front lines, because even if she'd been sent out of Loamlark and into the depths of the forest, even if she'd been sleeping on bare earth and waking up to a breakfast of vintage ration packs and equally vintage roadkill every morning, she'd at least be secure in the knowledge that there was an enemy somewhere on the horizon; more than anything else, she'd be comforted by the fact that she was one step closer to finding the Empress and making her pay for everything she'd done.

But no: after three days of stultifying boredom, she was still in Greenspectre, still on medical leave, still under observation, still confined to barracks, still sitting around doing next to nothing while she waited for Kiln to clear her for active duty.

And for the last seventy-two hours, everyone had been walking on eggshells around her, keeping her repressed in the most aggressively soothing manner imaginable: as the Mentor had commanded, Elphaba was to be kept as calm as possible without actually having her sedated, and remain under strict observation at all hours of the day except for her visits to the bathroom – and then only after the shower, bathtub, cabinets and toilet had been checked for arms. Thanks to the newly-repaired muscles in her hands, she was forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a pencil until the monitoring process was complete; to prevent escape attempts, her magic had been carefully shackled (again) with the aid of a suppressive amulet fused to her left ankle, effectively impossible to remove without Kiln's deft touch; and to add insult to injury, she was even restricted to plastic cutlery at the dinner table, and meals were now accompanied by a bevy of drugs intended to stabilize her health as her recovery (and crystallization) continued, all of which she was expected to accepted without complaint.

In fact, the only drug she'd refused in the last few days had been the dream pills. What was the point in taking those when the Mentor had made it abundantly clear that she wasn't really interested in hearing the truth without first embellishing it with her deluded ideas? So, Elphaba had taken each dream pill apparently without complaint, and then quickly spat them into her hand the moment Kiln's back was turned, ultimately flushing them down the toilet before bed. So what if she had to suffer a few nightmares as a result?

Of course, disposing of the pills wasn't easy in her current lodgings. Another annoyance: she wasn't even confined to her own apartment; for the duration of her stay in Greenspectre, she was to be kept in a quarantine cell attached to Kiln's private residence, with the doctor himself presiding directly over her treatment, Glinda, Chistery and Dorothy having volunteered to stay over and assist.

And all because she'd accidentally labelled herself a potential suicide risk.

Well, technically that hadn't been the word used in the official documentation; the exact term had been "a potential threat to herself and others."

It was her own damn fault, really; that was the most irritating thing at the end of the day. First of all, she'd made the mistake of refusing treatment for a life-threatening injury, even menacing Kiln when he'd tried to press the issue. Then, she'd spent her first hours back in the capitol swinging wildly between grief, rage, and rampant paranoia, calumniating in her solemn pledge to assassinate the Empress and kill anyone who got in her way – including the Mentor (threatening world leaders rarely ended well for her).

Demolishing Kiln's private operating theatre in a fit of pique hadn't exactly helped her case, either. And then of course, there'd been the aftermath of the autopsy…

"Elphaba," Kiln had pleaded, "Could you please-"

"No."

"I just need to-"

"No."

"It's very important that you-"

"No means no, Doctor."

"Elphaba, would you please let me finish? I know I'm probably your least favourite person in the world right now. Well, second-least, if you count the Empress. Okay, maybe the third-least... or possibly the fourth or fifth if we're adding the Wizard and Morrible into the equation. Sixth if-"

"Just get to the damn point so I can say no."

"Alright, alright… Elphaba, I know you really aren't in the mood to listen to me right now, but you need to calm down for a moment and think things through. I mean, even if you're not interested in reconsidering your approach, you clearly need time to recover from-"

"Oh for Oz's sakes! Are you actually trying to change my mind again now that I've finally started agreeing with you?!"

"Not at all. I'm just saying you need time to recover."

"I don't need time! I'm fit to leave right now, in case you hadn't noticed. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time I returned to Loamlark to finish the mission your boss saw fit to assign me, and with her permission, I'm going to locate the enemy beachhead and annihilate everything from the topsoil upwards. Does that seem reasonable enough to you?"

She'd rounded on the Mentor at that point. "And what about you, Your Ladyship?" she'd screamed. "Does that meet with your approval? Have I filled out enough paperwork for your liking? Are there any more reports I need to write? Oh, silly me, you don't actually read any of them. I mean, god forbid you find something that might actually contradict one of your little theories; no, that might make you stop and think about the fact that you condemned your Fiyero to death without even meaning to, and we can't have that, can we? No, we need everything as delusional as possible until it meets with your lofty standards of reality!"

Looking back, Elphaba could only wince at what she'd said: had she been in the mood to think about the words pouring out of her mouth, she might have realized just how utterly deranged she'd sounded in that moment. But then, she hadn't been thinking at all. Then and there, her mind had been almost blank except for the all-consuming, unreasoning impulse to hurt someone – the Empress, her armies, Kiln, the Mentor, anyone – and with the Empress still out of reach, her desire for revenge had singled out the Mentor. So, ignoring Kiln's attempts to calm her and effectively oblivious to Glinda's desperate pleas, she'd drawn her notebook from her pocket and flung it as hard as she possibly could at the Mentor's head.

Of course, she'd missed.

"Have a good read!" she'd shouted. "You might actually find some useful information in there if you can bring yourself to look at something that might ruin your little theories. Oh, who am I kidding? You'll probably just ignore it anyway, won't you? You'll just edit them out and put together something nice and sanitized, everything painful filtered out for easy consumption so you don't have to think about the past. But then, who cares about all that? You certainly don't, not after all the time and effort you spent having me remade into your trump card; the information isn't going to be worth a damn with Little Miss Unlimited on the front lines! I mean, Lurline only knows Unbridled Radiance will be in ruins within the fortnight with me at work, right?"

If the Mentor had been in any way offended by Elphaba's bilious ranting, she certainly hadn't shown it; she'd just stood there, utterly stone-face even as the diatribe grew more and more abusive. In the end, Elphaba had simply lost what little temper she'd managed to retain and stormed off with a scream of "Fine, be like that! It's not as if we had anything intelligent to say to each other anyway!"

And just as she'd turned on her heel to leave, the Mentor had quietly asked, "Exactly how were you planning on getting to Loamlark, Elphaba?"

"By broomstick, obviously! In case you forgot, the last time I used the damn thing I actually got as far as the border; okay, I burnt out the velocity spells and nearly ruined the inertial dampening enchantments, but it'll still get me as far as Loamlark."

"The broomstick I gave you?"

"Oh for Lurline's sake! Yes, the broomstick you gave to me during your half-assed secret test of character, and incidentally, if you try to play the ingratitude card after everything you put me through over the course of that little charade and all the other little charades that followed, this conversation will end in bloodshed. Drop it, now."

"The broomstick that you don't actually have with you?"

Of course, that had been Elphaba's cue to blink in confusion and quietly reassess her belongings: sure enough, her broom was nowhere to be seen, either on her person or among her luggage. In all the confusion and heartbreak of the last few hours, the matter of her broom had been so thoroughly driven out of her mind that she simply hadn't noticed its absence, and her had heart sunk as she'd realized that the last time she'd seen it had been during the Champion's ambush, when the airborne mine's detonation had sent it spinning aimlessly into the night. Wherever it had landed – on the road, in the depths of the forest or up on the mountain – it was presumably still there…

… along with her hat.

"I may have to hitch a lift," she'd amended sheepishly. "When's the next airship to Loamlark due to depart?"

"It's not," said the Mentor coldly. "You're not going anywhere."

"What?"

"You're on medical leave until such time as Doctor Kiln declares you fit for active duty."

"Oh COME ON! You've gone to all the trouble of getting me to agree to this appointment, and now you're keeping me off the front lines? Is this a new fantasy to add to your long list of delusions, or are you doing this just to get on my nerves?"

At this point, Kiln had stepped forward, visibly bracing himself for an explosion. "Elphaba," he began gently, "We-"

"FOR THE LAST TIME, NO!" Elphaba had roared, furiously slamming her hand against one of the columns flanking the exit.

And it was in that moment that, as the echoes slowly died away and the first inklings of pain began to trickle up her arms, Elphaba suddenly realized that she'd forgotten something else over the course of the last few hours: her injuries.

How exactly do you forget about quarter inch-deep lacerations to both your hands? How the hell do you just forget having your hands sliced open with a longsword?

Well, in hindsight, the answer was pretty simple: from the moment she'd made a point of refusing treatment from Kiln, she'd been steadily pushing their presence to the back of her mind as she thought more and more about Fiyero and the Champion. Admittedly, the thick stasis bandaging she'd accepted had all but banished the threat of blood loss, and the anaesthesia had left her numb from the forearms downward, but she'd still been vaguely aware of the wounds right up until the Empress had contacted her; when Elphaba had given full vent to her rage, it had eaten up so much of her concentration that she completely failed to notice that the eruption of her powers had ripped clean through the bandages on both her hands.

Gods only knew what she must have looked like to Glinda and the others, screaming at the top of her voice as she waved her mangled hands through the air like the rabid conductor of a non-existent orchestra, blood showering the floor with every extravagant gesture she made. She couldn't have made herself look more deranged unless she'd actually started frothing at the mouth at that moment.

And by the time she'd realized that something was amiss, she'd left a trail of blood leading all the way out of the morgue and across the lounge room carpet, terminating in a dark red handprint on the wall. And even then, looking down at the ragged gashes torn diagonally through the flesh of her palms, watching the blood slowly ooze down her arms and through the sodden remains of the stasis gauze, Elphaba still had trouble believing she'd actually been injured: even with the anaesthetic slowly wearing off and the pain creeping back with a vengeance, she found herself looking on with a curious sense of detachment – as if these wounds belonged to someone else entirely, as if she herself had only been a spectator to her duel with the Champion. Looking back on it now, Elphaba couldn't understand why: maybe she'd been in shock, maybe the blood loss was getting to her, or maybe the very last puff of wind in her sails had finally died away and left her teetering on the brink of sleep once again. In that moment, everything about the world around her seemed unreal and insubstantial – almost dreamlike.

Of course, with the wind well and truly out of Elphaba's sails, the Mentor had taken the opportunity to pounce. "You're on medical leave, Elphaba," she said, and if her voice had been cold before, now it sounded downright glacial. "No more arguments, no more protests. And no more talk of delusions," she added. "Sanity doesn't suit either of us, in case you hadn't noticed."

Elphaba had been too tired to disagree at that point, so she'd simply let Kiln haul her into a chair and get to work on her hands, while Glinda pitched in as best as she could. By the time the surgery was finished, Elphaba had finally succumbed to exhaustion and fallen asleep. It had taken almost four hours to properly repair the damage to hands: along with the additional procedures of cutting away the soaked bandages, stemming the blood flow and disinfecting the wounds, the healing process had been compounded by the presence of several miniscule shards of metal embedded in Elphaba's hands – leftovers from the Champion's now-shattered sword. Though the blade itself hadn't been poisoned, it had been augmented with a number of particularly vicious enchantments, some of which were still active in spite of the weapon's ruined condition: when Kiln had removed the last tiny fragment of sword from the base of Elphaba's left thumb, it had been slowly burrowing deeper, still trying to slice its way through her flesh by infinitesimal degrees. And once that was gone, Kiln went about slowly healing the damage done to the muscles of both hands; thanks to the severity of the wounds and all the additional damage done by the sword shards, it had been uphill work according to Glinda. Repairing hands was a tricky business at the best of times, as Kiln had informed her, in part because their dexterity was reliant upon comparatively delicate components; errors in rebuilding the muscles and nerves of the hand could easily lead to permanent loss of dexterity or even paralysis.

The real nuisance had emerged after the operation was complete: as well as being monitored as a potential suicide risk, Elphaba was also under observation for any potential side-effects of the sword-shards. For good measure, the extensively-rewoven muscles of her hands were still very delicate, and until they were back to normal standards, Elphaba was strictly forbidden from putting any unnecessary stress on them: no heavy lifting, no mountain climbing, and no bare-knuckle boxing, as Dr Kiln had put it.

That had been three days ago.

By now, Elphaba considered herself lucky to have survived the ordeal with her sanity intact.

Most of the time, it had been boredom that had driven her close to the breaking point: for seventy-two hours, she'd had nothing to do except sit and wait for permission to leave, and when Kiln had taken pity on her and provided her with some books, Elphaba had found it almost impossible to concentrate. Even when Glinda had picked out some of her old favourites (memorized from their days at Shiz), Elphaba still found herself driven to distraction by one little thing or another. Usually, it was the witch-crystal slowly colonizing her flesh: along with various supplements to her diet, she was given a slightly larger dose of Orecantheum dust twice daily, and the slow crystallization of her flesh was continuing faster than ever… as was the itching. More often than not, she'd found herself absently wondering – as she fought a powerful urge to rake her itching back with her fingernails – how long it would take until every last inch of flesh in her body was converted into crystal. Could she even survive that? But more importantly, how long would it take until she was powerful enough to beat the Empress in single combat? How long until she could face her and kill her at long last?

More than anything else, the thought of the Empress had driven her to the brink of lunacy; even if the crystals hadn't been puncturing her back in a dozen places, how could she possibly focus on trivialities like reading and everyday conversation when the Empress was still out there, still alive, still enjoying her dominion over one of the most powerful empires in history even after everything the repugnant little whore had done to Fiyero, to Glinda, to Oz…

For the last few days, her mind had been little more than a bubbling cauldron of bottled-up frustrations, minor annoyances, and simmering, murderous hatred: hatred of the Empress, of Unbridled Radiance, of Purification, of everything Alphaba had created – eclipsing even her rage at the Mentor and Kiln (not difficult, considering how it had cooled in the face of her near-fatal embarrassment). And the only thing keeping that little pressure cooker from exploding was the dim and distant promise of revenge.

Her skin first; she's so proud of her flawless skin, so convinced it was the first sign of her perfection. I'll dye it as green as it used to be… or else I'll rip it off, leave her naked and bloody like everyone she's Purified over the decades. Then her limbs, to leave her helpless and clumsy and drowning in her own filth, all the old elegance and beauty lost in a torrent of human waste. Then her tongue, so she won't even have the gift of charming others to her cause; nobody will listen to her gurgling in agony and think her perfect ever again. And then, once I've taken everything from her, once I've stripped even the barest vestiges of dignity from her broken carcass, I will kill her.

One day, they'd let her out. One day, they'd let her finish the mission they'd wanted her to embrace from the moment she'd arrived in this madhouse, this lunatic asylum of a universe. One day, she – and every other victim of Unbridled Radiance – would have justice.

One day, the Empress would die.

---

After far too many days spent as Kiln's guest, Elphaba could safely say that the good doctor's apartment was probably the oddest private residence in the entire palace: tucked away in one of the palace's more isolated towers, it provided more than enough privacy and space for the eccentric mage-surgeon to pursue his bizarre interests in peace; in the years since he'd moved in, the kitchen had been converted into a private laboratory, the dining room had been divided into the quarantine cells where Elphaba slept, and the guest room had been stripped bare to make way for the operating theatre – which was currently closed for repairs following Elphaba's little explosion.

Needless to say, it had been a reward for Kiln's long years of service to the Mentor. "Odd that," he'd remarked loudly over the course of the grand tour, "Considering she's rarely in the mood to actually let me do my job."

"I've missed your world-weary sarcasm, Doctor," the Mentor had replied, completely deadpan.

"And I've missed your self-destructive masochism, Mentor."

In the end, Elphaba had found herself continuously drifting into Kiln's lounge room, if only to stay out of the cells during the day – and because that strange room, with its mingling odours of apple-scented perfume and metallic alchemical drafts, was one of the few things that could help her relax these days.

The room itself was an obvious holdover from the days when the palace had belonged to the Wizard and green had been all the rage among his courtiers: the wallpaper was a rich emerald green, the curtains the colour of fresh oak leaves, the carpets a rich forest hue, the armchairs and couches anything from dark spring to pine, the coffee table carved from dark green marble threaded with white veins, and even the cobweb-shrouded chandelier overhead was studded with tiny glittering emeralds. On the face of it, the room was everything the respectable members of Oz's aristocracy would have treasured in their homes, and Elphaba would have probably gone insane within the first five minutes of sitting down.

However, a good look at the personal additions made to the lounge quickly revealed the fact that no respectable member of the Ozian upper echelons would have dared set foot in Kiln's apartment, which was one of the reasons why Elphaba liked it. Quite apart from the dust that had accumulated over the course of the last few weeks, the finely-carved shelves that would have normally been occupied by expensive ornamentation were instead crammed with books: lurid paperback horror novels, mouldering collections of essays on esoteric and disturbing forms of sorcery, dog-eared pocketbooks of romantic poetry, yellowed scrapbooks stuffed brimful with clippings from long-defunct Ozian newspapers, ponderous textbooks on medicine both magical and mundane, colossal spellbooks bound in oddly pallid-looking leather and oozing with arcane energies – many of them distinguished by their tendency to cast shadows against the light and whisper perversely to each other in the gloom of their enclosure… And on the bottom shelves, box after box of tattered magazines ranging from Thaumaturgical Developments to Monthly Knitting.

And assuming the respectable Ozians hadn't been frightened off by the good doctor's reading material, his choice in decoration would have easily sent them running for cover: in place of oil portraits of honoured ancestors, heads of state, and other distinguished (translation: pompous and extremely constipated) personages, Kiln's walls were cluttered with morbid teratological photographs, framed sketches of prototype augmentations rendered in wraithlike detail, and all paintings of almost-human figures in various states of transformation. For good measure, a large number of knitted scarves and blankets were strewn across the tables and draped over most of the chairs, a few still half-knitted.

If she'd had a choice in the matter, Elphaba would have gladly spent all three days out here on the couch; unfortunately, the room wasn't exactly the most sterile of environments, thanks in no small part due to the fact that it hadn't seen a dusting since Kiln's visit to Loamlark, so Elphaba had to make the most of her short time in the almost soothing confines of the lounge… or at least, she would if people were in any way inclined to leave her alone.

"Is everything okay?" Dorothy asked, her smile wide enough to hurt.

Elphaba nodded silently. She didn't trust herself to speak in case her frustration erupted again; cabin fever had been gnawing hungrily at the back of her head since midmorning, and the horribly winsome smile on Miss Gale's face was already starting to rub her the wrong way. It wasn't fair on the girl, of course: Dorothy had been told to keep smiling while at work, and more to the point, the advice was for Elphaba's sake – to keep her from getting upset, ironically. But that didn't stop her from finding that ghastly smirk almost irrationally annoying, probably because it looked so blatantly insincere: the girl was quite clearly afraid of her and obviously in no mood to smile, but nonetheless she kept on twisting her little face into that ridiculous excuse for a friendly grin.

"You don't want any more coffee?" The smile broadened, threatening to show teeth, before Dorothy remembered herself and hastily closed her mouth.

Why in Lurline's name was the girl playing nursemaid when her heart clearly wasn't in it? Why had she volunteered to look after Elphaba when it was clear that she was still terrified of her? She'd wanted to keep herself as busy as possible, fair enough, but why had she decided to play at being a nurse when Glinda was doing a perfectly decent job of it herself? Come to think of it, why had Vara or Kiln granted her request for this job in the first place?

"No thanks."

"Okay…" Dorothy hesitated for a moment, visibly toying with saying something; she'd been doing that a lot, lately, in almost every other conversation as a matter of fact. For the last couple of days, she'd clearly had something on her mind that she wanted to voice, either to Elphaba, to Glinda, or to Kiln, but whenever she plucked up the courage to speak, she abruptly wilted under her audience's gaze and changed the subject. Quite frankly, it was getting annoying.

"Are you sure?" she added helpfully. "It's no trouble if-"

"NO THANK YOU, DOROTHY," said Elphaba in a voice that could probably be heard on the other side of the tower.

The smile on the girl's face gave a tremendous wobble, then simply collapsed outright. Before she could stop herself, her jaws dropped open in fright, revealing a mouthful of aquamarine-stained teeth. Suddenly caught between fear of Elphaba and humiliation, Dorothy ran from the room as fast as her legs could carry her, one hand clamped over her mouth.

Okay, that was a little louder than I intended, Elphaba mused, as the echoes slowly died away.

She sighed, wearily massaging her temples in a vain attempt to ward off the frustration-induced headache that was brewing inside her skull. Of course, now a good chunk of that frustration was directed at herself by now: she'd only been sitting down for about five minutes, and she was already yelling at people – setting new records for loss of temper over the course of a single afternoon.

"Ook!"

She looked up to see that Chistery had alighted on the coffee table in front of her, and was now giving her a look of undisguised disapproval.

"I know, I know," she said. "I shouldn't have shouted, I shouldn't have lost my temper, I know. I'm sorry. It's just… I've only been here for three days and it already feels like three months. And… well, I honestly didn't expect her to panic so easily. I know it sounds callous, but she's even jumpier than usual, even after all the rehab Kiln's put her through."

Chistery sighed, and nodded his agreement. Well, he would agree: he'd been the only witness to what Dorothy had been up to over the course of Elphaba's little sojourn to Loamlark; Glinda had been too busy with errands that she refused to elaborate on, and while Vara had been around to look after her for most of the week, Dorothy had proved increasingly reluctant to remain in her company – or in the company of anyone else, for that matter. True, she'd made the occasional appearance at the breakfast table, held the occasional conversation with Vara and other acquaintances among the Mentor's staff, but most of her interactions barely lasted longer than a few short minutes at a time and never took place after lunch; and by two o'clock in the afternoon, she was nowhere to be found. And that was on what Vara had described as "the good days": towards the end of the week, sightings of Dorothy grew scarcer and scarcer until she'd all but vanished from the palace altogether.

With her room empty and her usual haunts leaving no clues as to what had become of the girl, Vara had been on the verge of assembling a search party when Chistery had sheepishly confessed (in a mixture of spoken words, pantomime, and hastily-scrawled notes) that Dorothy had suffered a panic attack earlier in the week and begged the Flying Monkey to find her a suitably obscure place to hide. Unfortunately, Chistery had very little knowledge of the palace's layout, having explored the building from the outside rather than traversing the maze of corridors within; as such, when asked to find a suitable hiding place, he'd merely sought out the same tower where he'd sheltered from last week's cataclysm and concealed Dorothy among the rafters… only to find that he didn't know how to properly direct Vara to it from within the palace, and simply coaxing Miss Gale out of hiding proved impossible for one reason or another. By the time they tracked down the exact location, the owner of Dorothy's "hiding place" had returned home.

They'd found Dorothy cowering in a ventilation shaft above Kiln's laboratory, scant minutes after Elphaba had been put on leave. Suffice to say, the girl wasn't interested in leaving, and it had taken a near-constant stream of reassurances from Vara and Kiln before they were able to finally coax her out of the vent. When at last she shambled awkwardly into the light, even Elphaba found herself gawking at the bedraggled child tottering up to them: shivering, barefooted, skin blanched fishbelly white, bloodshot eyes wide with fear, her clothes practically dyed grey by the dust, hair matted with cobwebs, she was quite possibly the most miserable-looking figure Elphaba had ever seen outside of a detention camp. The moment she was able to speak coherently, Dorothy spent almost an entire minute apologising for everything under the sun: for making Vara worry, for breaking into Kiln's apartment, for leaving dirty footprints on the lab tiles, for sleeping on the couch, for breaking the lock on the bathroom door, for stealing food from the larder. Eventually, once she finally ran out of things to beg forgiveness for, she confessed that she'd been sneaking in and out of the apartment throughout the week, until three days ago, when she'd decided it'd be safer to stay there.

"Why?" Elphaba had asked.

"I heard the Hellion raided another town – fourth this week," Dorothy mumbled. "And I thought… well, I heard there were a lot of people who lost family then, and I thought they might want to… to… maybe they'd just hurt me, I thought, but maybe they'd give me to… Her… so I hid."

The Mentor had sighed deeply at this. "Dorothy, I told you before that I wouldn't make deals with the Hellion, and I meant it. I'm not going to suddenly change my mind, and I'm not going to take the coward's way out and allow a lynch mob to deliver you to the Hellion."

"Unless it was a 'grim necessity of war,' of course."

"Really not helping, Elphaba."

Towards the end of her time in hiding, Dorothy's paranoia had grown so debilitating that she hadn't even felt safe in her newfound sanctuary, and though nobody had gotten within sneezing distance of the apartment in almost a week, she'd been near-constantly convinced that she was within minutes of being discovered. So she'd started sleeping in the vents… then living in the vents, only emerging to steal food from the cupboards or sneak into the bathroom. She hadn't even budged when the spiders had started objecting to her presence.

Needless to say, Dorothy hadn't been in the best of health when Vara had finally found her: quite apart from all the spider-bites she'd acquired, she'd also earned her fair share of bumps and bruises from scurrying around the ducts, and living off nothing but stale biscuits for three days had left her decidedly malnourished. But the most astonishing symptom of her nervous breakdown had been the damage to her teeth: something had stained everything from her incisors to her molars a luminous electric blue, clearly visible every time the girl opened her mouth.

It turned out Dorothy had been stealing dream pills from both Glinda's prescription and Kiln's dispensary, at first in an attempt to stifle her nightmares of the Hellion, but later just so she'd be able to sleep at all. By the end, she'd been downing them three at a time, and often several times a night after insomnia had started cutting into her sleep.

"Enterprising girl," Kiln had remarked. "She hasn't even hit puberty and she's already abusing prescription meds."

In any event, Dorothy was now in more or less the same boat as Elphaba, having been remanded to the dual custody of Vara and Dr Kiln for a program of intensive rehabilitation: plenty of bed rest, three square meals a day, antivenin and antibiotics for all the spider bites, and a regular dose of mild dental solvent to remove the pill residue from her teeth. Also, something about Dorothy's growing paranoia and chronic nightmares had piqued Kiln's curiosity, so a good deal of the mage-surgeon's spare time was now spent studying his newest patient's blood samples for anything out of the ordinary. A permanent solution was still some distance away, though, so Kiln had reluctantly allowed Dorothy half a dream pill every evening to smother her nightmares; and to keep her from giving too much thought to her paranoia, Vara and Kiln had also tried to keep her occupied as possible – which was one of the reasons why she'd ended up playing nursemaid to Elphaba.

Back in the present, Elphaba herself could only shake her head. "I've never seen a kid get so paranoid," she muttered. "Even under current stress, I'm pretty sure it's not normal for kids to be so… distrusting."

Chistery shrugged.

"Even I was pretty naïve at her age, and… well, I was cynical grouch from age five onwards, but I still believed in the Wizard like everyone else in Oz. Actually, come to think of it, so did Dorothy."

Chistery nodded.

"So what changed? She didn't get this paranoid in the Emerald City, even when I was skywriting demands to hand her over. Maybe the Hellion's attempt at kidnapping her did the trick, but that still doesn't explain everything. There's something else at the heart of this. And then there's all the times she tries to tell me something and then clams up, Oz only knows why-"

"Ask her."

"-when she's not exactly… I'm sorry?"

"Ask her," Chistery repeated. He pointed over Elphaba's shoulder, where Dorothy was now standing in the doorway, eyes still wide as saucers.

Elphaba took a deep breath. Even after everything that had happened since their arrival in the Deviant Nations, apologising to the girl felt very odd; even perfectly civil conversations felt a bit on the weird side, exacerbated by the fact that the Hellion was still feathering her nest with the Ruby Slippers. But then, it wasn't as if Dorothy had asked for this to happen. Sometimes it took an effort of will to remind herself of this little point, especially on the fortunately rare occasions when Elphaba's temper flared and her memory dredged up a few unpleasant images of Dorothy being carried shoulder-high around a town square by jubilant Munchkins as they celebrated Nessa's death – but now wasn't one of them, thankfully.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you, Dorothy," she began. "I know it's not fair on-"

"No, I'm sorry," Dorothy interrupted. "I should have said earlier, but – I just got so scared, and I-"

Without warning, the little girl hurried forward and hugged Elphaba tightly around the middle. "I'm so sorry about your father," she babbled, voice on the edge of hysteria. "I'm so sorry about the Wizard, and I know you didn't want it to be him because I know how much you hate him, and I'm sorry you had to find that out, and I'm sorry you had to see that happen to him."

Elphaba, who'd been tentatively reaching down to return the hug, froze. "Wha… Dorothy, how did you-"

"I saw it all, Elphie, I saw it all through the other Dorothy's eyes and I'm so sorry about what happened to Nessa and to Fiyero and this world's Fiyero and and and I've just got so much stuff in my head so much stuff in my head and it's starting to hurt and it's been getting better since I've stopped taking three dream pills at once but it still feels like my head's going to explode and it feels like I'm being watched and it feels like the Hellion's following me around with her hands under my skin and I'm afraid if I go to sleep properly because she'll be there waiting to make me a doll but even when I take the dream pills she's sniffing around waiting for me and-"

She paused for breath. "Blue eyes," she gasped. "Ice blue eyes, they're watching me in my dreams these blue eyes and the Hellion's never far away calling out and that's when I take the pills if I don't it's so much worse - and I'm just so sorry I haven't been able to get the Ruby Slippers back and I should have turned myself in and I'm sorry I've been such a nuisance and-"

She stopped at long last, tears streaming down her face. "I'm sorry," she concluded, and hurried away.

In the ringing silence that followed, Glinda leaned through an open doorway, boggling at the space that Dorothy had just occupied. "What was that all about?" she wondered aloud.

"I… I think she just needed to get that off her chest," Elphaba mumbled vaguely; she was still trying to process what she'd just been told, which was particularly difficult considering the speed at which Dorothy had babbled out her latest apology. "Through the other Dorothy's eyes?" If Kiln had been listening in on this conversation – a virtual certainty given his tendency to hover within earshot of his guests whenever they gathered – he was probably going into conniptions over this new data.

But the question was, how had this Other Dorothy been privy to what had happened to the Wizard? What had Dorothy really seen in the dream memories?

---

"Do you want to talk?" Glinda asked quietly.

Elphaba looked up, startled out of her reverie. "About what in particular?" she asked.

"About anything, Elphie; we've barely spoken at all in the last three days – you haven't even said anything since noon… and you've obviously got things on your mind, so I thought talking might help."

Glancing over at the clock on the mantelpiece, Elphaba realised that it was almost two-thirty in the afternoon; sighing in annoyance, she gently set down her coffee cup, and tried to think of something to say – something positive, something reassuring, something that would make Glinda stop worrying about her. Unsurprisingly, nothing in particular came to mind: Elphaba had never been good at offering reassurances (not convincing ones, anyway) and she wasn't exactly an optimist at the best of times. Under any other circumstances, she'd have asked to be left alone for a little while, preferably before her temper snapped again… but after three days swinging wildly between boredom, grief, frustration, regret, and explosive rage, Elphaba was finally beginning to notice one emotion distinct from the others – distinct in the sense that she might actually be able to do something about it:

Loneliness.

She'd missed Glinda throughout her time on the northern front, had spent days on end wishing for nothing more than a face-to-face conversation with her, and she might have forgotten her longing during the last three days of rage and misery, but it was starting to make itself felt again – if anything, stronger than ever. Remaining almost silent except for complaints, questions and answers hadn't helped; now that they were finally beginning to subside, their passing brought the loneliness into sharp relief.

And silence had hurt her in other ways, she reflected: she'd seen so much at the front, learned so much about herself and about this word, been forced to witnessed things she wished could be forgotten. And even after all the grief her experiences had given her, she'd scarcely mentioned a word of them to anyone outside of a few angry outbursts without context… and, of course, the official statements: dream-journal entries, mission reports, witness statements, psychological evaluations conducted by ephemeral analysts drifting wordlessly in and out of her cell at ungodly hours of the morning to gauge her sanity – these had been her only outlet for the doings and dreams she endured at Loamlark, her only confession for the crimes she'd both witnessed and committed as one self or another. Glinda was right: it was time to speak up; she'd left too many things unspoken for too long, and it was only worsening her mood.

And yet, the moment she opened her mouth to speak, everything she'd prepared to say abruptly retreated – as if the words didn't want to be said, as if the Wizard's last secret was trying to keep itself hidden.

By the time her mouth slammed shut for the second time, pride had already overtaken her and she'd started making excuses.

"What's there to tell?" Elphaba said at last.

She immediately regretted it: hurt was already blossoming across Glinda's face, worsened by the fact that Elphaba's flippant remark clearly sounded like a rebuke.

"After everything you said to the Mentor, you don't have anything to say to me?"

"You're not the Mentor, Glinda. Don't give me that look, I know she's technically you… but all the dimensional ties in the universe can't make you her. I said what I said because I was angry with her, because… well, she was keeping secrets from me, again, and in case you hadn't gotten the gist from the argument, one of those secrets could have saved the Champion's life."

"See, you're talking now. Like I said, you've obviously got something on your mind."

"So? We've barely spoken to each other in days, Glinda – I'm pretty sure you've got just as many things you want to talk. I mean, why don't you talk while I listen?"

Glinda looked blank. "What could I possibly talk about?" she said, drawing out the "w" slightly longer than necessary.

"Anything! Where you keep vanishing off to at six in the morning, for example-"

"Nowhere," Glinda interrupted, a little on the defensive side.

"Alright then, what you got up to while I was away, the reconstruction efforts so far, what the Mentor's being doing over the last week or so between mad fantasies, news on the Hellion, the price of shoes in Greenspectre-"

"They're actually cheaper than you might think, though that's probably because war rationeering isn't due to start for another couple of days, or so Vara tells me. Actually, I found some really nice heels down in one of the smaller markets, and I've got to pay that shop another visit soon, because this pair was – hey!"

"I knew that would get you talking."

"Come on, I know you hate listening to me talk about fashion… and I know you want to talk more than I do. Seriously, what makes talking about Loamlark so problematicatory?"

"Nothing," Elphaba lied. "I just don't want to talk about it."

"If you don't want to say anything, why did you wait for so long before making up your mind? Why do you keep writing stuff down on your notepad and ripping the pages out as soon as you're finished? I know for a fact that you're not writing reports anymore, so you've obviously got something on your mind."

"Glinda, even if I wanted to tell you, what would be the point? You already know the whole story."

"No I don't! That's why I'm asking."

"You already know, because you've seen it happen before: I went in big and bold, I used magic more powerful than I'd ever dreamed of, I impressed a few people, and then everything fell to pieces. Shiz, my reign of terror, and now Loamlark. Same old story, different week. One way or the other, I screwed up – again. I could have saved Fiyero – again – and I didn't. I could have saved Harker, and I didn't. I walked into a trap – again – and I could have avoided it, but I didn't. The only life I saved last night was an enemy POW, and even if a lynch mob doesn't kick the door in and rip his scalp off all over again, he'll be facing life in prison, execution, or suicide – I'm told it's popular among prisoners from Unbridled Radiance. I screwed up: story of my life in three words."

"You see? You do want to talk!"

In spite of herself, Elphaba couldn't quite suppress a snort of laughter. It wasn't an especially happy laugh, but judging by the look on her audience's face it was better than nothing.

"Come on, Elphie," Glinda whispered; she'd been sidling closer for the last minute or so, and now she was sitting in the next to Elphaba, close enough for her to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You've been dying to talk about this since you got back. I don't know what really happened out there – Kiln and the Mentor won't tell me – but from the sounds of things, it was horrible… and maybe it'll be easier to cope with if you share it with me."

"Glinda, I-"

"I'm your friend, Elphie: I'm here for you. I won't judge you, I won't blame you for anything that happened out there, I won't even say anything if you don't want me to. I'll just listen."

This was her warmest, gentlest tone of voice, the tone that had served as Elphaba's first inkling that there might be a real person under 'Miss Galinda's' carefully-sculpted exterior all those years ago. Glinda Upland could be surprisingly persuasive when she felt like it, and even more so when she was working to a professionally-written script, but Elphaba had never been much convinced by the cheap charisma she'd displayed at Shiz. It was only when she stripped away all the glib charm, artificial giggles and carefully prearranged one-liners that Elphaba found herself truly swayed… as she was now.

So, taking a deep breath to steady herself, Elphaba sat back in her chair and began to explain as best as she could: she charted out every single moment of that awful evening, from the dream-memories of Alphaba's successful coup, to the unwanted revelation of Harker and the Champion's true identities. She left no detail unexplained, no torture undescribed, no death unmentioned, every shocking discovery discussed in lurid detail, the information pouring out of her in a near-frantic torrent of words; it wasn't quite as rushed as Dorothy's half-deranged confession, but it was certainly close – if it hadn't been for Glinda's hand on her shoulder, Elphaba probably wouldn't have managed a single coherent word in the entire story. And despite unearthing so many traumatic moments, she actually found herself feeling better as the screed continued; as long as she kept forcing the horrors of that night out of her head and into spoken word, as long as she kept venting every grisly episode into the harmless world of conversation, those awful memories had no power over her.

It took almost an hour to finish her story, for other than a few hiccups and hesitations, she stopped for almost nothing; nor did she censor anything or even omit anything… except, of course, for her ongoing crystallization. After all, even with the words rushing out of her like water from a burst dam, she still had the presence of mind to realize that this was as much about putting Glinda at ease as it was about putting herself at ease; revealing that the Mentor's newest conspiracy ran the risk of killing her wouldn't have helped anyone at that point. So, she left the witch-crystal unspoken, and went on venting… until at last, she finally concluded.

Glinda hadn't spoken throughout the entire monologue, having been too busy holding Elphaba's hand and turning chalk-white with astonishment, but in the ringing pause that followed Elphaba's plunge into silence, she mumbled, "The Wizard's your father?!"

Elphaba sighed. "Apparently so. For a while, I'd hoped that it could only be true in this world… but then, if that was the case, why would my mother have kept the bottle?"

Because Kiln had gone to the trouble of removing anything potentially lethal from her belongings, the little green bottle was no longer in Elphaba's pocket: it was now sitting on a shelf on the other side of the lounge with the rest of her confiscated possessions, bathed in sunlight from the window and now casting an unearthly emerald glow across the shelf. "Why would my mother have kept a cheap glass bottle from a travelling salesman if they hadn't shared something together?" Elphaba asked nobody in particular. "I mean, it's not as if her marriage to fath- to Frexspar was perfect, was it? Lurline only knows how many arguments I heard when I was little, but…"

She took a deep breath. "Do you think he knew?"

"Sorry?"

"Do you think Frexspar knew he wasn't my father?" She thought for a moment. "No. If he'd known for sure, he'd have had me sent to an orphanage under an assumed name the moment he'd gotten the opportunity… and that's assuming he wouldn't have just abandoned me on a street corner somewhere. But maybe he suspected something; I don't think he'd have been willing to besmirch my mother's memory by bringing it to light, but… well, it's not as if he didn't have enough reasons to hate me."

She smiled sadly. "Bastards always destroy their families," she said quietly, "or so they say. I suppose the story had to be true once, right? I killed my mother, waged war on my father, drove my foster-father to a heart attack, and I stood by and did nothing while my sister – my half-sister – died. In the end, I brought nothing but shame and ruination – to my family, and to Oz."

"Elphie-"

"And you know what's really sad? If I'd learned the truth back at Shiz, I'd have been overjoyed! Thanks to Morrible's offer, I already had my eyes on becoming the Wizard's vizier, and I'd hated Frexspar for years; being officially recognized as the Wizard's daughter would have been a dream come true for me… and who knows? If I hadn't flown off the handle, if I'd kept my head long enough for the two of us to discover the truth, I might have been able to change Oz for the better… and Fiyero would still be alive."

"Elphie, that wasn't-"

"He showed up to save my life, Glinda; he was captured while covering my escape; it was my responsibility to save him by whatever means were available to me, and I failed. Ergo, my fault. End of story."

"And it was my fault you had to be saved to begin with!" Glinda shouted.

There was a pause, as Glinda did her best to compose herself before continuing: "The only reason why the Wizard went after Nessarose in the first place was because I suggested it; I told him that a threat to your sister was the only thing that could bring you out of hiding – because I was angry about Fiyero running off with you! So you see, it's not your fault, it's-"

"Still mine. Glinda, has it ever occurred to you that Morrible and the Wizard would have come to that conclusion without your help if you'd given them enough time? So what if there's blame to share? At the end of the day, you couldn't have known what Morrible would do, and you didn't know that Fiyero would suffer for your choice. I knew what was going to happen: I saw the storm in premonitions, I saw the house falling, and I still failed to save Nessa. I knew what would happen to Fiyero the moment he was captured, and I had it in my power to save him, but I failed at that too. The lion's share of the blame rests with me."

"But still-"

"But nothing: it was bad enough seeing Harker commit suicide because he thought he was to blame for the fall of Oz and the death of Fiyero; I'm not prepared to watch you torture yourself into an early grave for crimes you didn't commit."

"What, and I'm supposed to sit back and watch you do the exact same thing?"

Elphaba made a face. "If you're claiming that I wasn't responsible for Fiyero's death – or Nessa's death or Frexspar's death or any of the growing tally I've been adding to my conscience over the last few months – this might just be my cue to roll my eyes and start repeating myself. And if you're talking about driving myself into an early grave, that's not going to happen; contrary to what the Mentor seems to think, I'm not suicidal."

"Then why do you keep torturing yourself? I mean, why are you agreeing with everything the Empress said about you?"

"Because she was right about me, Glinda!" Elphaba exploded. Somewhere in the distance, there was a musical crash of breaking glassware and a muffled expletive as Kiln dropped the tray of petri dishes he'd been carrying.

"Look at what's happened over the last few days," she continued. "Look at what's happened ever since I set out to stop the Wizard: I've failed almost single mission I've set myself, I've blundered into the most infuriatingly obvious traps, and for all the talk I've heard about my unlimited potential, I've changed absolutely nothing in this world or Oz except perhaps adding a few hundred notches to the death toll. Back in Oz, the Wizard's still in power, the Animals are still caged and still being silenced, and the people are either too ignorant, too apathetic, or just too bigoted to care. And what about all the people I tried to save? Fiyero, Nessa, Doctor Dillamond are all dead or worse, either because I couldn't reach them in time or because I wasn't strong enough. The few Animals I did save from the re-education camps are probably all recaptured and silenced for good by now. So you tell me, Glinda, in all my fruitless years spent fighting for one cause or another, who have I ever managed to save? Who have I saved?"

"Me," said Glinda simply.

By that point, Elphaba was out of breath and her throat too parched for speech anyway, so she had nothing sarcastic to say in response; she could only watch in mute exhaustion and surprise as Glinda went on. "You were the one who rescued me from the airship a week ago, remember? Okay, the Mentor helped with that, but you were the one who had to fly over Oz only knows how many miles of country and fight your way through an entire airship crew to get to me. I'm only alive right now because of you!"

And you're only trapped in this world because of me. The only reason you had to be saved at all was because of me… and considering the number of airstrikes this building sees at this stage of the war, I'd consider your current liveliness a very, very, very tenuous condition indeed. I haven't really saved you at all, have I?

"And what about Dorothy? From what Vara tells me, she wouldn't have been rescued at all if you hadn't told the strike team where she was – and you spooked the Hellion into handing her over! So you see, you've saved both of us… just as you saved me back at Shiz."

Elphaba blinked. "I did?"

"Do you remember what I was like when we first met? If it wasn't for you, Elphie, I'd still be that girl: I'd still be the same heartless, brainless, shiftless, useless excuse for a human being I'd been since I turned fifteen, the same overgrown kid pretending to be a grown-up. I'd have gone through life without ever realizing there was more to the world than popularity and fashion, or that I could be more than silly little Galinda; I'd be just another Emerald City fashionista, peddling gossip for fun and marking the time of day with cocktails and cheap wine. Do you remember all those rumourmongers who all teamed up to slander you during the "reign of terror," those people who made up all those stories about how you could shed your skin, or that you had a third eye or some nonsense like that? I'd have been one of those halfwits… and that's assuming I'd have noticed the world outside the Emerald City at all. I probably wouldn't have even noticed the Animals being caged!"

Maybe, but at least you'd have Fiyero. At least he'd be alive.

Glinda took a deep breath. "Before I met you, Elphaba, I wasn't really living: I was just… pretending. It's only because I met you that I had a life to save at all. Because of you, I've changed for the better."

She hesitated, and then added, "So did Fiyero."

At that moment, Elphaba wanted to scream: she wanted to leap out of her chair and tell Glinda how horribly wrong she was, that Fiyero hadn't changed for the better and neither had Glinda, that neither of them owed their maturity to Elphaba in any way, and that the only thing Fiyero had gotten out of his relationship with Elphaba had been an early grave. Once again, she wanted to explain how right the Empress been about her, all the while storing more and more visceral fantasies of torturing Alphaba to death in their final battle. But in the end, she simply didn't have the energy for a rebuttal; her own ranting had burned away most of it, and Glinda's explanation had stolen away what little remained.

All she could do was sit there for a moment, not knowing what do or say next. But then, as the conversation had once again turned in Fiyero's direction, her thoughts began to follow more closely, bringing with them a flood of memories that Elphaba would have preferred to keep locked away for the time being: visions of Fiyero's first days at Shiz, of the Ozdust ballroom, of their rescue of the Lion, of that wicked evening they'd shared together in the forest, even moments that had only occurred in the dream-memories.

In the end, Elphaba could only whisper, "I miss him so much…"

Glinda nodded in silent agreement.

"I mean, I thought I'd gotten over it – Lurline only knows why I'd think that, but I'd almost managed to push everything about that day to the back of my mind. Then, the Champion dies and it's like it only happened yesterday. Actually, it's even worse than that; it's just happened all over again, just with a slightly more direct role in the proceedings: I felt all the same emotions I did on that day, the same rage, the same despair… and after a while, the same numbness."

Glinda opened her mouth to reply, but then thought better of it. Truth be told, she didn't need to; Elphaba could easily hazard a guess at what was going on inside her head: after all, she'd seen how Glinda had responded to the news of Fiyero's death, and to the sight of the Champion's body; she hadn't cried at all. Indeed, she hadn't reacted with anything other than blank shock; she'd simply retreated into herself and let the world rage on around her. Glinda had felt the numbness too, and perhaps she felt it even more keenly than Elphaba: in the last few days, Glinda had been wandering around the apartment in a state of unnatural serenity, busying herself with the chores she'd been assigned without complaint and without even the faintest hint of emotion. But every now and again, she'd stop halfway through working and stare off into the distance, her face suddenly furrowed with confusion, every line of her expression reading "what is wrong with me?" Elphaba had seen this expression staring back at her from the mirror far too often and far too vividly to mistake it for anything else.

You wait, Elphaba thought. If the absence of tears bothers you, just wait for a couple of days. Then, just when you think you'll never shed another tear in your lifetime, it'll happen: you'll be walking down the street one day, browsing through shop windows, minding your own business, and you'll see something that reminds you of him. Maybe it'll be a jacket, a pair of boots, something he would have been proud to wear. You'll think "Fiyero would have loved this…" And all of a sudden, the realization hits you harder than ever before: he's dead, gone forever, and all the moments you shared together died with him. And you will cry. Maybe you'll be able to hold back the flood until you get home, maybe you'll break down right in the middle of the market, but you will cry.

Elphaba had experienced this for herself more than once… most notably when her mother had died. Driven half by shock and half by her own instinctual urge to avoid inciting Frexspar's wrath, she'd suppressed as much of her grief as she could until she was alone and far away from her foster-father's own grieving; ultimately, she found herself conspicuously dry-eyed for the better part of a week. All through her mother's funeral, even as mourners from all over Munchkinland had flocked to offer their condolences and tears (feigned or otherwise), young Elphaba had remained as silent and impassive as a statue, her emotions seemingly entombed in ice for the duration of the ceremony. Needless to say, Frexspar had hated her all the more for displaying so little emotion… but then, he probably would have hated her for ruining the solemnity of the occasion if she'd cried. Not that Elphaba herself had cared: she was operating on autopilot at that point, blindly following her daily routines without even realizing that half of them were meaningless now that mother was dead.

The grief had finally hit her in depths of one such routine: she'd found herself preparing a tray of food to take up to mother's room, hoping that she'd be feeling better after the last few days of sickness and wondering what mother and father would name the baby when it finally arrived… and then the realization came crashing down on her head: mother wasn't waiting for her. And she'd cried: she'd dropped the tray, slumped against the wall and sobbed for about ten minutes before someone had finally arrived to investigate the noise; Elphaba couldn't tell who it had been, for the sudden influx of grief had left her effectively dead to the world, and she hadn't been able to see through her tears anyway. The last thing she'd remembered was being scooped into the stranger's arms and gently carried back to her room.

Back in the present, Glinda had one hand on Elphaba's shoulder, once again doing her best to comfort her despite the odds all-too visibly stacked against her. But then, just as Elphaba was starting to relax, Glinda let out a loud yelp of pain and yanked her hand away at whiplash speed – blood suddenly blossoming from a fresh cut on her index finger.

"Ow! Elphie, have you got glass shards in your clothes or something?"

It took a few seconds for Elphaba to realize what Glinda had been talking about; after all the conversation, she'd almost managed to forget the persistent itch of the crystals burrowing through her flesh. But eventually, the inevitable realization truck her with the force of a freight train, and in that moment, Elphaba's heart all but stopped. Ever since she'd been inducted into the Deviant Nations' war effort, she'd been doing her best to keep Glinda from worrying about her, or worse still, being drawn into the conflict herself; if Glinda were to discover the witch-crystals, there was guaranteed to be backlash. She would certainly be worried and undoubtedly angry at the risks Elphaba was taking: at best, there'd be a shouting match and a considerable degree of strain on their relationship; at worst – or in other words, in all likelihood…

A host of unwanted visions marched unopposed into her psyche, seemingly as real as anything she'd seen in her premonitions of the future, each nightmare featuring a worse outcome but all of them sharing the same basic premise: Glinda, already reluctant to remain in the palace while Elphaba diced with death, would decide to take the next step from reticence to outright rebellion… and follow her to the battlefield. From there, it was an ever-worsening parade of injuries and torment: Glinda would suffer horrendous injuries on the battlefield, would lose limbs and eyes in her attempts to remain by Elphaba's side, would leave the front just as scarred and twisted as the Mentor – assuming she left alive at all. Maybe a sniper would get in a lucky shot long before her first day on the battlefield, maybe enemy artillery would bury her under the rubble of her barracks before she even saw combat. Maybe she'd survive long enough to die in combat, long enough to put a stop to the enemy's forward march through sheer luck; perhaps, if there was enough of her to bury, she'd be given a lavish funeral befitting one of the Deviant Nations' greatest heroes – as Harker had been just yesterday. Sooner or later, though, all these little nightmares ended the same way: one way or another, Elphaba would lose Glinda just as surely as she'd lost Fiyero.

And all because she'd found out about the witch-crystal.

"I swear I felt something sharp back here," Glinda was saying. "Are you sure you didn't fall against one of Kiln's specimen shelves again?"

"It's nothing," said Elphaba hastily, once again speaking a little louder than intended.

"Nothing? Elphie, look at my hand! Do you really want something that sharp sticking out of your dress?"

"I'm fine, Glinda."

"I'm just saying you should probably change clothes or something. I mean, I can't see any glass shards, so maybe you should let Kiln have a look."

"I'm fine, Glinda; there's nothing wrong with me or my clothes at this point in time."

"But surely-"

"I told you once already – I'm fine, Glinda!" A moment later, Elphaba was out of her seat and moving for the nearest exit, slamming the door behind her – but not before she got a good look at the expression of shock and hurt on Glinda's face.

There was a pause, as Elphaba allowed her heartbeat to return to normal.

Then, a voice behind her murmured, "You'll have to tell her sooner or later, you know."

Once Elphaba had managed to extract her heart from her mouth, she belatedly realized that the room she'd hurried into was actually Kiln's laboratory; and as expected, the good doctor was still pottering around the former kitchen, ferrying petri dishes to and from their various receptacles, his long fingers dancing elegantly across the various control panels with spidery grace.

Here, almost every single surface available had been given over to all manner of esoteric equipment, some of it mechanical in design, others purely magical in nature: beakers, vials, alembics, crucibles, cauldrons, volumetric flasks and all manner of glassware clustered the benchtops by the dozen, many of them interconnected by a network of delicate glass pipes and plastic tubing. Metal stands and frames studded the walls, holding everything from suspended flasks of alchemical preparations to colossal spellbooks held open for Kiln's perusal, often accompanied by a wide variety of tools and instruments; magic wands of half-rotted wood tended to be the most common of them, as were enchanted rings currently engaged in a losing battle with corrosion. But it was the ceilings that held Kiln's interest more often than not, for it was here that he truly delved into mage-surgery: dangling from the rafters like chandeliers were a vast assemblage of jars and vessels, all of them supporting organic bodies in various states of disassembly; hearts pumping of their own accord, severed hands twitching and clenching at nothing, brains of all sizes and shapes sparking beneath webs of electrodes, sightless eyeballs with pupils that still widened and contracted with every shift in light… and, of course, the age-old favourite: a writhing membrane of transparent skin stretched taught across a frame.

Here, the apple scent was diluted by the alchemical mixtures at work, exacerbated by the smell of the things Kiln liked to grow in the back cupboards; as such, with the air so dense with unpleasant odours, it took a while for Elphaba to catch her breath and reply.

"Really not helping, Kiln," she gasped.

"Hey, I've got to advise my patients when appropriate."

"Good. When it's appropriate, I'll let you know."

"I'm serious, Elphaba: after spending Oz only knows how many years watching you risking your life, I think she'll adjust to the idea of witch-crystal quite readily, so long as you give her some time to adjust."

"And what if she decides that she's not interested in sticking to the sidelines anymore? What then?"

Kiln paused, eyes briefly transfixed by a large fishtank filled to the brim with an ominous billowing mist. Somewhere just beneath the fog, vague shapes bulged and undulated, oozing and blossoming across the smudged glass; some of them briefly mushroomed to the surface just long enough to reveal growths of blubbery fungoid matter tipped with human fingers and eyeballs, before hastily sinking back beneath the gas. Of course, this particular tank had raised a great many questions from Kiln's guests on Elphaba's first day in the apartment, so Kiln had helpfully explained that this tank was actually a source of flesh; because corpses weren't always available for harvesting by mage-surgeons ("And because the corpse recycling act didn't do so well after the first couple of riots," Kiln remarked), it was more logically and economically sound to simply grow a fungible variation on flesh in much the same way that Unbridled Radiance manufactured flesh-porcelain. Effectively identical to the real thing in almost every conceivable way, this mass-produced flesh was the source of the Deviant Nations' organic creations, from the smogeaters used to cleanse the air of pollution and impurities, to the augmentations employed by the Irredeemables… and it was from Kiln's private bank of flesh that Elphaba had earned her latest skin graft.

"I wouldn't worry about it," said Kiln at last. "Besides, I think you might have other things to think about."

"Like what?"

"Well, for a start, you've been cleared to leave."

"… what?"

"You heard me: the psych evaluation is complete and the report's been released; you're no longer a suicide risk, and you're officially fit to continue active duty. As soon as you're ready to go, you'll be released from my custody and allowed to return to your room."

"When do I return to the front?"

Kiln shrugged. "I'm afraid that's up to the Mentor and the council of generals. You might have to wait for a bit until you hear from them."

Elphaba sighed. "How in the world did I know you were going to say that?"

"Because I'm a very predictable person," said Kiln, without missing a beat. "Plus, I imagine you're suffering from a touch of cabin fever by now. Needless to say, I strongly advise you to take your release from custody as an opportunity to wander; you'll need to clear as many cobwebs out as possible before bed – you won't have the luxury of proper sedatives this time, don't forget. By the way, how's that latest report coming along?"

"Fine," Elphaba lied.

And since I'm not taking dream-pills, I don't have the luxury of mild sedatives either. Oh well, it's not as if anyone really cares about the reports, anyway…

---

In the end, Elphaba did more than wander.

Driven by frustration, boredom, depression, and a bevy of wild revenge fantasies targeted at the Empress, she'd roamed aimlessly through the winding corridors of the palace, traversing the maze with no objective except satisfying her desire for an escape – from the confines of Kiln's apartment, from the stifling company of others, from Glinda's dangerous curiosity, from the silence that threatened to bore holes in her brain. She'd chosen a direction almost on a whim and charged down the halls at a breakneck speed, changing course only when she glimpsed figures in the distance, for she'd wanted to be alone in this little journey.

Eventually, her solitary voyage brought her to stairwell deeper than a mineshaft and far too grandiose for its own good; she'd clattered down it as noisily as she could, enjoying the echoes of her footsteps as they reverberated off the marble walls and along the sculpted balustrades, rattling the mullioned windows overhead as the sound rose to a deafening crescendo. She vaguely recalled shouting something as she'd descended, but she couldn't remember what: the thunderous cacophony of echoes blotted out everything after a while, even thought – as Elphaba had intended. Eventually, she'd reached the bottom of the stairwell and charged out through a colossal reception hall that could have hidden an entire battalion of soldiers in its chrysalis-like balconies and domed front desks, through the oversized front doors and out into the city.

From there, things were a bit of a blur: the last concrete thing she remembered was finding a bar somewhere on the outskirts of the industrial district; for a while, she'd eyed the vicious-looking clientele: heavily-tattooed stevedores with limbs like granite pillars, veteran soldiers pockmarked with battle scars and bristling with anxiety, visiting mercenaries armed to the teeth and twice as scarred as the soldiers, horribly mutilated industrial workers either bleached a ghastly white by mishandled chemicals or scorched half-skinless by blowtorch malfunctions, and a small congregation of Irredeemables who'd had themselves augmented with sheer resilience in mind – glistening bulletproof exoskeletons, leathery pachyderm hide and flesh like cooled lava seemed to be the most popular alterations.

"I'll have what they're having," she'd said.

Three hours later, a small party of bruised and distinctly embarrassed-looking bar patrons had carried Elphaba back to the palace, bedraggled and extremely drunk but otherwise unharmed. Indeed, as the guards later informed her, she was the only one of the revellers who hadn't been injured over the course of the evening.

She remained awake just long enough to mutter a few half-hearted goodnights to Glinda, before staggering back to her room and collapsing on the bed, absently hoping against hope that she wouldn't dream that night.

Unfortunately for her, she did.

---

"You belong with us," Fiyero continues, the bloodied remains of his teeth still clenched in a hideous grin.

"This is the only world where you'll ever be content," the Champion explains, indicating the multitude of graves in the distance. "This is the only world where you'll ever be at peace."

"This is the only world where you'll be free from your mistakes."

"This is the only where you'll be reunited with your loved ones."

"Where you'll be reunited with your victims."

"All are one in the serenity of death."

"Join us."

But Elphaba's already running, sprinting across the barren soil and vaulting frantically across the headstones as best as she could; on some level, she's dimly aware that this is a dream and there's nothing tangible to fear, but every time she tries to grasp at that knowledge, it slips through her fingers; in end, she's left convinced that this impossible necropolis is somehow as real and solid as the waking world.

Somewhere behind her, she can hear Fiyero and the Champion shambling after her, calling out to her in voices as deathly and sepulchral as the graveyard itself.

"Why are you running?"

"You want this."

"You need this."

"This is your only escape…"

Elphaba does her best to ignore them as she hurries away. She should easily be able to outrun them, so long as she doesn't look back: looking back means giving them the attention they want; looking back means acknowledging their demands; looking back might mean accepting their invitation. Looking back means death. She would have risked turning around if she'd known her magic would be able to stop the two advancing cadavers, but the logic of the nightmare has already begun to alter her mind – as most nightmares do: she is now operating on a mode of thought that that she hasn't experienced since her earliest childhood nightmares, and knows that she cannot stop the advancing horrors. She doesn't even have the option of flying away, for the broom is nowhere in sight. She can only flee on foot, sprinting blindly across the graveyard and hoping against hope that she can outrun her pursuers.

Thunder rumbles on the horizon, briefly drowning out the dreadful voices, and by the time the noise finally subsides, Elphaba has charged past a heavy set of wrought iron gates and sprinted out of earshot, pausing only to slam the gates shut behind her.

She's now standing in large plot of land set aside for a distinguished set of tombs, all marked with the same incompressible names, all of them marked with the distinctive pointed hat sigil. A quick glance over her shoulder reveals that Fiyero and the Champion are nowhere in sight, and for a moment, Elphaba makes the mistake of believing herself safe.

Then, a voice from an open tomb whispers, "Why can't you just admit the truth?"

Elphaba turns, and her stomach lurches as Nessarose steps into view: crushed almost beyond recognition, her body is a mangled ruin of shredded flesh and shattered bones, her every movement punctuated by sickening pops and snaps as her skeleton struggles to keep her upright. Her chest has been pincushioned from within by the remains of her ribcage, her limbs twisted back on themselves by the intense weight that killed her, and her face is almost invisible beneath the bloody froth still pouring out of her mouth and nostrils – forced out of her lungs and up her throat by crushing pressures. In fact, the only part of her that have escaped damage are her feet, now barefoot without her distinctive striped stockings and the long-lost Ruby Slippers.

"Sisters are supposed to care for each other, Elphaba," Nessa rasps plaintively. "You couldn't care for me when I was alive, you couldn't save from my murderers, and you couldn't even bring back the Ruby Slippers. But surely you can stay with me, can't you? Surely you can admit the truth to yourself: surely you can admit that you want to stay with me?"

Gagging, Elphaba tries to look away, to turn her back on the apparition slowly advancing on her. But the dead woman's voice imprisons her. "Please, Elphaba," the corpse pleads. "Sisters shouldn't be apart. Sisters should care for each other. Please, let me help you into the world of endless sleep. Let me save you."

This time, Elphaba manages to tear her eyes away from Nessa's corpse, and turns… only to see the figures of Melena and Frexspar Thropp shambling out of their tombs. Shrivelled and mummified after months or even years in the grave, their desiccated forms and dusty funereal garb still wreathed in a thick haze of perfumes and embalming compounds.

"You killed us," Melena hisses.

"You ruined our lives," Frexspar snarls.

"You killed our daughter."

"And now you pretend you don't to be with us."

"You want this."

"You need this."

"This is the only justice you'll ever know."

"The only justice we'll ever know."

"It's the only way we'll ever be together."

"The only way we'll be a family again."

"Don't you want a family, Elphaba? Don't you want to belong with us?"

But Elphaba is already running, sprinting to the nearest gate and all but hurling herself through it; this time, though, she doesn't even have the luxury of shutting the gate or even having a moment to catch her breath. A corpse is waiting for her on the other side, his tattered uniform barely hiding the wounds that Elphaba had inflicted on him in his final moments.

"I was surrendering," he moaned. "I was surrendering and you killed me…"

And all over the graveyard, corpses are slowly burrowing their way out of their graves, all of them calling Elphaba's name – and to her horror, Elphaba realizes that she knows the figures who'd been interred: soldiers who died on the battlefield under her command, Ozian guardsmen who'd been killed in Elphaba's attacks on the re-education camps, even Animals she'd arrived too late to save. All of them are here, all of them howling her name as they swarm towards her.

In desperation, Elphaba makes a break for the distant shape of the mausoleum: it takes less than two minutes for her to hurry across the lifeless soil and up the hill, but with decaying hands reaching out for her with every step, it seems to take decades to make it up those crumbling stairs. Somehow, she arrives just ahead of the mob, forcing open the heavy ironclad doors with one almighty shove and bolting them behind her.

But there's someone already waiting for her. To Elphaba's surprise, it's not a corpse; indeed, the figure slumped in the corner never even died.

Harnley lies half-collapsed against the wall, once again his handsome pre-Unbridled Radiance self. And yet, there's no mistaking the elements that will one day transform him into Harker: there's no trace of his triumphant smirk, nor the sneer that replaces it in his uglier moods; instead, his posture is slumped in depression and his eyes are full of tears.

He's holding a revolver to his head.

As Elphaba watches, he presses the barrel of the gun under his chin, and without saying a single word, pulls the trigger.

Click.

Harnley very slowly lowers the gun and checks the cylinder; but no, the revolver is loaded. Without missing a beat, Harnley slides the pistol under his chin once more, and for the second time, pulls the trigger.

Nothing.

Once again, Handsome Harnley checks the revolver for what might have stopped it from firing; unable to find anything, he puts the gun to his head and fires.

Still nothing.

Seven times in a row, he goes through the grim ritual, tears still streaming down his face, only to be met with failure – over and over again.

"Don't bother listening to them, Elphaba," he whispers. "She won't let you, not as long as there's still a war to be fought."

"W-what?"

"The Mentor won't let you die, Elphaba, not until Unbridled Radiance lies dead and stinking in the earth. I should know: she wouldn't let me die, not even when I realized what I'd done to Oz… because of what I did to Oz. Just watch…"

There's a whisper of magic in the air, and then the revolver in his hands goes flying, landing in the outstretched hand of a figure standing on the other side of the chamber. But it's not the Mentor, not as Elphaba knows her; its Glinda. Yes, she's well into her thirties, if not turning forty this very moment; yes, her face is weathered and cratered from years of combat; yes, her hair has turned iron-grey… but it's definitely Glinda. Even with all the battle scars and signs of aging, it's still undeniably her. But the eyes… oh, those eyes, black and cold and merciless as a moonless night; only the eyes reveal that this woman is, in fact, the Great Mentor.

"You're not taking the easy way out, you pathetic little shit," she snarls. "You gave up your right to rest in peace the moment you helped murder Elphaba. You want to die? You want to die for your sins? Then earn it! Prove to me that you regret what you've done! Prove to me that you want redemption!"

And with that, the Mentor simply fades away.

"How did I see that?" Elphaba asks nobody in particular. "I haven't taken any dream pills tonight."

"No," says Harnley, "But remember, you don't need the dream pills to see the dream-memories; you just need them to clear away all the normal dreams that might disrupt the unconscious effects of the synchronization. You're not getting a clear picture… but you're experiencing other things. Your powers are blossoming, Elphaba, and it's starting to reach out for other things in your sleep; other minds, other dreams, other memoires. Perhaps this is the Mentor's memory… or perhaps you've plucked it from my brain, dead as it is."

"And how the hell do you know that?"

"You're not really talking to me, Elphaba: you're talking to a figment of your imagination; in a way, you're talking to yourself. You've heard all this information elsewhere, probably without even listening clearly, and now your brain is regurgitating every last morsel of information into your dreams."

Harnley sighs. "You probably shouldn't have dropped the dream pills too soon, Elphaba: you've spent too long without properly dreaming, and now you're facing down the raw chaos of your own mind at a time when you couldn't be more at odds with yourself. Tonight's booze probably didn't help, either."

"But if you're a figment of my imagination, everything you just told me could be complete nonsense. How can I trust anything you say?"

Suddenly, the revolver is back in Harnley's hand. "You can't," he says, smiling mirthlessly, and without another word, he slides the gun-barrel under his chin and pulls the trigger. And this time, the gun fires: this time, the bullet tears through his skull, shattering his face like ancient clay and scattering the masklike shards to the four winds.

And yet, he still lives: under the shattered remnants of his face, another one is slowly forming, eyeless as a cavefish and knotted like the bark of an ancient tree. Eventually, he reaches up with long, thorn-tipped fingers and plucks the remaining bits of his old face away, somehow seeing her clearly even without eyes.

"You might want to brace yourself," Harker solemnly advises her. "The worst is yet to come."

A moment later, another apparition coalesces at the far end of the mausoleum, hovering in mid-air above the furthest of the tombs. Even at a distance, there's no mistaking the figure of Glinda – not the Mentor, not some transitional stage between the two, but the Glinda that Elphaba has known and loved since their days at Shiz.

"Watch," she whispers. "This is what will happen if you don't join them, Elphie: this is what will happen if I can't be free of you…"

Suddenly, her throat is cut by an invisible blade, blood instantly pouring from a wound that would have torn her head off it had cut any closer, leaving Glinda to suffer, slowly dying of blood loss, shock, and-

Suddenly, a bullet tears through her head, snuffing out her life in an instant, and as blood and brains exit her skull in a fog of gore-

Suddenly, a noose wraps around her slender neck and tightens; Glinda claws desperately for breath, but the invisible hangman will not be deterred; as Elphaba watches, the noose slowly drags Glinda helplessly into the air, crushing her windpipe and forcing her through the agonies of strangulation-

Suddenly, a long blade digs under Glinda's bare flesh, sliding between the topmost layers of skin and the red tissue below, and then peeling away; soon, Glinda has been flayed from head to toe and her body is an agonized mass of skinless muscles, raw and bleeding and screaming.

A thousand deaths are visited on Glinda, and a thousand more are threatened as Elphaba watches in horror.

"If you don't join them," Glinda whimpers mournfully, "I'm going to die. Do you really want that, Elphie? Do you really hate me so much that you'd wish that on me?"

But Elphaba cannot answer: she can only scream.

Just before she wakes, there is a moment where sees something hovering above Glinda's tortured body.

A moment later, she is awake and scrabbling for the jar of dream-pills in a desperate attempt to blot out the nightmares, sobbing uncontrollably until Glinda hurries into the room and draws her into a tight embrace – not realizing that her numbness is gone at last and she is now crying along with Elphaba, even as she struggles to comfort her.

But Elphaba had seen them glowing softly in the darkness of the mausoleum:

Eyes.

A single pair of unblinking ice-blue eyes hovering in the void.

Just as Dorothy had said…

---

The next morning, once Elphaba had gently extracted herself from Glinda's arms and clambered awkwardly out of bed, she found something waiting for her at the foot of the floor-length mirror: a single white lily had been left on the carpet at the very edge of the mirror's frame, its stark white blossom gleaming in the morning sun.

Tied to the flower's stem was a tiny parchment scroll bound in black ribbon; gingerly, Elphaba undid the ribbon and drew the scroll into the light. There, written in solemn black font, were four simple words:

It wasn't your fault.

Nonplussed, Elphaba absently turned the parchment over, and found there was another message waiting for her on the opposite side.

I know Glinda did her best to convince you, it read, but if you still believe you have not saved a single soul in your lifetime, follow these instructions: within the next twenty-six hours, you will be sent back to Loamlark, and once you arrive, you must seek out the jailhouse where, three nights ago, a lynch mob gathered for a pitch-capping that you interrupted. In the cells of that building, waiting for release, you will find incontrovertible proof that you have saved someone – and that you've changed them for the better.

For a moment, Elphaba could only blink in confusion. Then, almost on instinct, she looked up at the mirror… and even though she saw only her own reflection, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that someone else was looking back at her.