A/N: Aargh! I'm back, ladies and gentlemen, don't ask me how: last month was bloody terrible and the fact that I couldn't end this chapter to my satisfaction for the longest time only made it all the worse.
With any luck, my efforts have borne suitably entertaining fruit... but you'll have to be the judge as always.
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Wicked is not mine.
Dorothy isn't sure how long she remains there, slumped across the scorched earth beneath a blazing sky; it could be hours, or it could be days, for in the blasted ruins of the Emerald City, there is no day or night – only an endless twilight of putrid black smoke and hellish orange flames. Movement is impossible: even if every nerve in her skinless body weren't alight with pain, she now has two additional arms in place of her legs and no idea of how to control them. So, she can only lie there and wait for the end.
It's okay, though: Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are here to keep her company, joined occasionally by the farmhands, the neighbours, the folks from the nearby townships, friends long lost to time, even her parents. All around her, the ghosts swarm, whispering words of comfort in indecipherable nonsense, voices overlapping into a chorus of discordant, howling, babbling noise. She is dimly aware that this must be madness, and that the terrible stabbing pain that rippled through her skull at the moment she saw her reflection – and realized what had become of her – must have been her sanity cracking in half. Somehow, Dorothy just manages to maintain distinction between the hell inside her head and the hell that is all around her, even as Aunt Em sprouts fangs and begins to eat her alive, even as Uncle Henry falls to the ground on cloven hoofs and tears his belly open with his own teeth…
She contents herself with the knowledge that this won't last forever. After all, it isn't as if she'll live very long in her current state, is it? Surely it wouldn't be possible for someone in her condition to actually survive? No, she will die just as the real Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had. Without skin, she will turn diseased and rotten; with all her injuries, she will slowly bleed out… and even if somehow she doesn't succumb to her own wounds and mutilations, she now lies helpless in the middle of a war zone, surrounded on all sides by burning wreckage, collapsing buildings, firestorms a thousand feet high, and other things Dorothy can't even hope to name, much less recognize. Sooner or later, something will kill her; sooner or later, something will put her out of her misery.
Time passes and a million awful hallucinations come and go, but somehow she remains impossibly alive, even as red-hot ash rains down on her from the burning skyline, even as hailstorms of broken glass lash her skinless flesh, even as things from the gaping chasm that was once the Pottery seep out across the cratered road and crept towards. Though her mind and body are both in tatters, the glimpses of what lies beyond somehow still reach her, and now they tell her that the scientists and magicians under the Empress' command have not taken all their work with them; there are plenty of dirty little secrets that they were happy to do away with, and her visions tell her that all that putrid magical waste is oozing from the depths of the Pottery – pouring over her defenceless body, permeating every part of her.
But how can she know if what she sees in these visions is true? Is this really happening, or is this just more madness? Has any of this actually happened, or is this just a fever dream? For what feels like centuries, she hopes that she'll soon awaken to find herself back in Kansas, sitting under the tree while Toto licks at her face and Aunt Em demands to know where she's been all afternoon.
If only I knew where the farmhouse landed, she thought deliriously. If I could take shelter there, I'd at least be a little more comfortable. I might still have Toto by my side – if he survived the journey to… wherever the house landed.
And then, just as she is beginning to wonder if the most she can look forward to is a total disconnect from reality, she hears the distant thunder of colossal engines on the horizon, and looks up from the bewildering patchwork of waking nightmares and visions and real world horrors just in time to see an airship rumble to a halt not too far away. The air is briefly split with the bang and crack of gunfire, followed by several agonized screams. Then, a few extremely crowded minutes later, three heavily-armed men in stark white uniforms are standing over her.
"What the hell is this?"
"Another aberration. Empress only knows how many mutants infest this area alone."
"Odd. This one still seems partly human. Most of the ones we've encountered so far barely seem to retain a biologically consistent shape… and it even seems more lucid than the others. It hasn't even attacked us."
"Shall we eliminate or capture?"
"Well, the radiation from the Pottery is still too dangerous for any of to approach, so the mission's already a failure. We might as well take home a consolation prize for the labs: perhaps this one will be the test subject that can finally crack the conversion problem. Get its arms."
"Which ones?"
"Just grab it, you moron."
And in that moment, Dorothy wants to speak. She wants to scream – but of course, hours of smoke inhalation, screaming and the nightmare that's consumed her throat have made speech impossible. All she can do is wheeze and croak, vainly trying to gasp out the words "why didn't you just shoot me?"
"Why the hell did you bring the dog?"
"I didn't! The moment he heard Dorothy's life was on the line, he invited himself!"
"And you couldn't have just told someone about this before we went through the mirror?"
"Doctor, have you ever tried to stop small, irascible dogs from doing as they please? Sentient or non-sentient, they're second only to cats in terms of stubbornness."
"Speaking of which, is he actually an Animal with a capital A or just a very bright dog?"
"Well, I haven't heard him speaking in Oz or this world, so probably the latter. I'll have to ask Dorothy whe… if we can find her."
There was a pause, as the little knot of figures tried not to think of what they might find at the end of the tunnel ahead: before them, the cave entrance yawned open like the jaws of some ancient, petrified monster half-buried in the bedrock. According to the Mistress of Mirrors, there were many entrances to the Hellion's den, the heart of her domain lying at the very centre of a vast warren of tunnels and passageways burrowing deep into the earth, several of them snaking under Unbridled Radiance and the Deviant Nations; however, this was one of the few that wasn't guarded by dolls or blocked by environmental hazards. This was the simplest route from No-Man's Land to the den itself; somewhere at the other end of this long, winding tunnel, the Hellion lurked.
Behind them, No-Man's Land unfolded in all directions, a hellish patchwork of crags, cliffs, chasms, peaks, barren plains and stagnant pools. From what Boq had told them, there were stranger terrains still here in the war-ravaged desert: there were ruined cities where reality occasionally fractured and dissolved, forests of howling mesas, crystalline pinnacles that reflected things too terrible to witness, and all manner of other things. Out here in the wilderness, only the strangest and deadliest lifeforms in the world could find purchase amidst the impossible environs, and few outsider could survive the thaumaturgical radiation and unearthly weather patterns of the wastelands unchanged without some kind of protection… assuming, of course, that the wildlife didn't end up killing them anyway.
Thankfully, the search and rescue party had been able to bypass the worst of the irradiated regions of the desert: thanks to the Mistress of Mirrors, transportation hadn't been a problem. Just for safety's sake, everyone but Fiyero and Boq were equipped with several under-layers of protective armour-plating and specially-built magical amulets to ward off malignant energies; Toto was currently wearing one such pendant around his neck, much to the bemusement of the Mentor's quartermaster. All the same, Elphaba would feel a lot better once they were as far away from No-Man's Land as possible: it wasn't just that the place was dangerous, or that the Hellion might be lurking nearby, or that Dorothy might be being converted into a doll in that very moment; it was that everything about this place was wrong.
She'd learned the grisly details of this place long ago, and Boq had already told her about his visit to the Potter's Field – the ruins that were all that remained of the Emerald City. But it was one thing to learn the truth, and another to see this place again with the full weight of context behind it: this place, with its vast ruined cities, its graveyards of derelict airships, its impossible terrains and endless desolation, had once been part of Oz. This was all that remained of Munchkinland, the Vinkus, and all the other territories of Oz consumed by the war; the lush farms and rolling grasslands were nothing more than blasted deserts now, and all the places Elphaba had known, loved and even despised – Shiz University, Kiamo Ko, the Emerald City, even her home at the governor's manor – had long since been reduced to so much rubble and ashes. In this era, all that remained of the once-proud realm were a few salvaged buildings, a handful of living relics, and a people without a past, all divided between the Deviant Nations and Unbridled Radiance; the rest lay here in the nightmare lands between the two great powers, upon the corpse of Oz.
And though Elphaba knew that this wasn't her Oz, that all the places she knew were still intact in her native dimension, she couldn't shake the deathly chill that had swept over her.
"Are you okay, Elphie?" Glinda whispered.
"I'm fine. I'm just…"
There was a pause, as Elphaba tried to encapsulate everything that was currently giving her the creeping horrors. In the end, she settled for the one thing she might, with an astronomical case of good luck, actually be able to do something about.
"I just can't shake the feeling that we're already too late," she said shakily. "That Dorothy's already been made into a doll and all we're doing is throwing more lives into the meat grinder just so I can try to make amends for another one of my stupid mistakes."
Glinda put a hand on her shoulder. "If there's one thing I've learned in the last few weeks, it's that there's no such thing as 'too late.' Even if Dorothy is a doll, we can always bring her back to Greenspectre and see if we can cure her."
"Good grief, you make it sound so easy."
"Hey, weren't you the one who said 'some things I cannot change, but 'til I try, I'll never know'? Maybe we can undo whatever the Hellion's done to Dorothy, or stop the process before it gets any worse. Maybe this'll be like one of those old stories when killing the villain undoes all the enchantments and restores the cursed to normal."
"I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that, Glinda."
"Well, given that nobody's been able to explain how the Hellion does anything, you never know. Just try to be optimistic for a change: after all, you're a hero of the Deviant Nations, now; you can afford to trust in yourself. Oh and just remember, what happened to Dorothy-"
"If you say 'it wasn't your fault,' I may be forced to chew off my own ears. I don't care if that's impossible – I will find a way."
"You see? Just hold on to that can-do attitude and you'll be fine!"
In spite of herself, Elphaba let out a snort of laughter. "Never change, Glinda." She took a deep breath. "Okay… everyone ready?"
There was a murmur of assent from the group: Glinda drew her new wand; Dr Kiln readied a quiver of bone-quills; Fiyero awkwardly armed his rifle; Boq hefted his freshly-sharpened axe; the Terror Twins readied a brutal-looking assortment of automatic weaponry, and Gaunt raised his staff. For good measure, Toto barked.
"Alright then… let's get going."
Time passes. Bit by bit, her grip on the world around her begins to loosen.
For months on end, she has been a prisoner: though her mind is hazy and feverish throughout each day, she is aware that she has been brought aboard a research ship currently patrolling the blasted wilderness that was once the Emerald City; from what the doctors whisper to one another outside her cell, this is a wilderness that seems to be growing every week as the fighting between the Empress and Glinda continues, a landscape populated with monsters spawned from the experimental weapons both sides now use. They call it No-Man's Land, and true to the name, nobody dares set foot in it except under the most desperate of circumstances.
The doctors who have caged her seek to bring Purification to these monsters, to see if they can be restored to normal and elevated to the level of the Empress's Chosen. So far, most of their attempts have been met with failure: every day, more corpses are dragged from the operating theatre to the morgue, courtesy of yet another botched attempt to return a mutant to normality. Others are judged too violent, too dangerous to be surgically redeemed, and are simply executed – their bodies swiftly dissected for information and dumped in the ruins. The few successes are paraded naked before the others, their gleaming, Purified bodies proudly displayed for all to see.
She is the lone exception. Her body rejects Purification, but somehow, she does not die. She cannot be corrected, nor can she be wounded: her amputation saws shatter like glass upon touching her new limbs, her skinless muscles shrug off the doctors' efforts to layer it with Flesh-Porcelain, and alchemical injections seem to dissolve before they can have any effect on her; they still hurt, of course, but they cannot inflict any real harm.
Even normal infections and illnesses no longer have any hold on her: for the longest time, she'd hoped that being flayed head to toe would eventually kill her, but somehow her body is still lingering on. The doctors talk of thaumaturgical energy fields, imbuements with random energies and portal radiation that have rendered her stronger than any normal human body, and can even shield her from harm; they talk of miracle mutations caused by exposure to the things that leaked from the Pottery's sorcerous refuse dumps, things that have saved her from the grisly deaths that befell other victims of the Slamming Door. However, all she understands is that her body has become another kind of prison from which she can never escape.
Worst of all, the visions and ghosts will never leave her alone, nor will she ever be able to tell the difference between the two: here, in these icy steel cells and gleaming silver corridors, there is no way of telling if what she sees in the mirrored bulkheads is a vision of the real world or a phantom of her own imagination. So much of her life today would have been called impossible once upon a time, so how can she be sure?
Several doctors hope this new power can be replicated, so they experiment at length, seeing how much damage she can sustain, photographing and sampling where possible. Others look upon this as a different kind of opportunity, and are now using her as a test subject for new and untried forms mental conditioning: every day, they drag her to the lab and see if they can open her eyes to the love of the Empress, see if they make her desire perfection with all her heart. Unlike the surgeries, these testing session do seem to have an effect, for every time those white-hot electrodes descend on her skull, her mind goes white and she loses all sense of where she is and what has become of her. But it's not the effect the doctors want, so they try again, and again, and again – until she begs for them to stop in a voice as if it escaped from the bowels of hell, but of course, they do not listen.
The doctors say she should be experiencing pleasure, even something akin to a religious experience, but every time they blanket her brain in their web of electrodes, all she feels is a stabbing pain in her head and a crushing sense of loss. And when she awakes, she has the strangest feeling that something very dear to her has been stolen, but all too often, she cannot understand what she has lost – every time she comes close to comprehending it, understanding slips away into the void.
All she knows is that she is forgetting things.
She remembers Kansas. She remembers Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. She even remembers Toto. But every day, with every session, the memories of her past grow hazier and hazier: already she cannot remember her name or what she was in Kansas, only that she has changed for the worst and she has lost everything she once knew and loved. Even her dreams are becoming less distinct, the ghosts and mirages she sees while awake shedding the familiar, comfortable figures and dissolving into terrifying, nonsensical phantasms.
She's tried to tell the doctors this, but they only shrug their shoulders and laugh. "Just as well," they mutter amongst themselves. "The less she remembers, the less deviation we have to scrub away through conventional methods."
"Another benefit," they say. "She's a young one, probably barely a teenager if those tests are conclusive – so it's not as if she had much of a past to lose to begin: when you think about it, she's the perfect candidate for mental correction."
"Yes, yes," they whisper. "We must continue testing…"
And so, the bonfire of memories goes on, and every day, she grows a little less, loses just a tiny bit more of herself. The doctors tell her nothing, of course, pretend that she never had a past to lose, that she has no real memories of her own, only dreams and madness. They are giving her a very lonely new life here aboard the research ship, slowly convincing her that she has never had anything of her own in her entire life. At times, she even catches herself crying – bawling, really, just like the child they believe her to be.
But for everything she loses, she gains something new.
The more the doctors take away from her, the more she takes in from the world around her… and her jailers have long since stopped caring about what they say and do in front of her. The researchers aboard this ship have a very impressive library of copied spellbooks, and in their efforts to correct her these arcane tomes, they carelessly leave the pages in view.
Already she has discovered ways to refine her inexplicable visions and read knowledge in the fabric of the world around her. Soon, she will no longer have to crawl to her trough to drink.
Bit by bit, she is learning how to fly.
In the end, it wasn't the darkness that began to truly unnerve Elphaba, for magic easily dispelled the shadows. Nor was it the cramped corridors, the low ceilings, or the sense that these ancient tunnels could cave in at any moment – though that certainly didn't help. No, what truly unsettled her was the smell.
It was almost impossible to describe, because it began so subtly at first, growing slowly but surely as they descended – until all of a sudden it was everywhere. It wasn't the kind of smell any animal or Animal would produce, for even wild beasts tended to keep relatively sanitary lairs, but rather a melange of different odours blending together into one singularly unpleasant stench: there were odours of rotting wood, fungus-ridden cloth, aged paper, decaying flesh, human waste, and most distinctively of all, fresh blood.
Every now and again, they'd find corridors that branched off into dead-ends where the Hellion had stored her more junk, and here, the smell was so strong that even Boq cringed. In one such cul-de-sac were stored the dangling carcasses of several dozen butchered animals, long since stripped bare of anything edible and left to rot; in another, the search party stumbled upon a vast cache of animal bones, consisting mainly of rats and wild dogs – and the occasional bear – all sporting sizeable bite marks. From the looks of things, the Hellion didn't eat often, but when she did, she gorged herself quite hideously. Thankfully, none of the corpses were human: however insane she was, the Hellion had no desire to eat her future dolls.
Eventually, however, Toto picked up Dorothy's scent and took the lead, much to Elphaba's relief: up until then, they'd pretty much been flying blind. From what little she'd been told as they'd been ushered into No-Man's Land, the Mistress of Mirrors had dealt with the Hellion before, but she'd never travelled beyond the cavern entrances where the two of them met for the occasional conferences – so she had no information on the layout of these caverns. Worse still, the Hellion knew how to counter the Other Nessa's tricks with her own magic, blanketing mirrors with enchantments and binding the shadows to keep out intrusions, so there'd been no way of simply teleporting them into her lair. The help of a loyal dog was always welcome on days like this.
After many twists and turns and forks in the road, they found the first of the dolls: hung up on hooks and fast asleep just as Fiyero said they'd been, their ghastly faces leered down at them from the walls like harlequinesque gargoyles. There were only a handful out here in the furthest passages, but as they drew closer to the lion's den, the dolls grew more and more numerous until Elphaba had to hunch down and all but crawl through the tunnel – or risk awakening them. Thicker and thicker the dolls amassed on the walls, joined slowly by bare chambers cluttered with hoarded items by the thousands, the dreadful silence growing heavier and heavier…
…until at last the nine of them stumbled into a wide open cavern shrouded with tawdry crimson curtains and studded with candles. The smell of blood and dust was the thickest here, mixed with the stench of greasepaint, and Elphaba knew – long before Fiyero and Boq told her – that this could only be the Hellion's den.
But then, it wasn't the smell that had tipped her off, nor even her intuition: sitting just outside the room was a small heap of discarded clothing, and even after all the patching and fraying and bloodstains they'd intercepted since their arrival in this world, there was no mistaking Dorothy's dress and shoes. For some reason, there was a nultherite blade tucked into one of the pockets, obviously overlooked by Hellion. And as for the owner of these clothes…
Pushing aside the curtains, Elphaba was immediately greeted by the sight of a huge bed sitting in the very heart of the room, draped in layer after layer of silk, velvet and cotton, and almost mountainous with pillows. As expected, the walls were clustered with dolls, forming an amphitheatre of the Hellion's beloved companions – dormant, but ready to awake at a moment's notice.
And there, lying fast asleep in the centre of the bed, was Dorothy.
She was dressed in the same red-and-black silk motley as the other dolls, her dark hair was hidden beneath the hood of her uniform, and her face had been smeared with a ghastly collage of red and white greasepaint, but for all that, there was no mistaking the fact that she was still a human being. For whatever reason, the Hellion hadn't transformed her yet.
"Just in time," Elphaba breathed, scarcely daring to raise her voice above a whisper. "Somehow we got here before she was converted."
But Fiyero shook his head. "The journal I read while I was here described the transformation taking several days to complete: maybe it's already begun and we just don't know it yet."
"Well, we can save her anyway, and see if we can cure her back in Greenspectre. Does it really matter?"
"It might, if she's already experiencing the mental side-effects," Boq muttered. "It'll be hard to bring her back if she's fighting us every step of the way."
"Did the journal mention any early signs of the transformations? Anything we could actually see with our own eyes at this point in time?"
Fiyero thought for a moment, humming tunelessly to himself as he wracked his memory. "Yes," he said at last. "The soldier who wrote the journal ended up with first-degree burns on his face, and he said that two of the other men captured alongside him also showed up with facial burns; from the sounds of things, he thought it was the burns that caused the transformation to begin with – something to do with the Hellion's touch."
Elphaba drew a handkerchief from her pocket, and began gently wiping the makeup from Dorothy's face, taking great care not to wake her in case she raised the alarm. Beneath the greasepaint, however, Dorothy showed no signs of burns or blistering anywhere, and if the Hellion had used some other method of commencing the transformation, none of them had any way of detecting it even with diagnostic spells.
"That's good enough for me," said Glinda. "Let's get her out of here before the Hellion returns."
Without even being prompted, Elphaba reached down and very carefully scooped Dorothy into her arms. This time the child stirred ever-so-slightly, and though she did not awaken, she mumbled a few incomprehensible sentences and leaned into Elphaba's shoulder, hugging her sleepily as she drifted back into unconsciousness. Even in the darkness, there was no mistaking the contented smile on Dorothy's face.
This could mean one of two things: either the girl was instinctively responding to a familiar presence, or the Hellion had already started brainwashing her. The latter was the safer guess, but if it wasn't… was Dorothy genuinely happy to be around Elphaba again? Was that what that sleepy hug meant?
The look of mingled puzzlement and concern must have shown on Elphaba's face, because Glinda very hastily hid a smile behind her hand. "Are you getting parental all of sudden?" she whispered.
"Does it matter?"
"You are!"
Elphaba sighed. "We can talk about this later; for now, let's just get going before the Hellion gets back…"
They have taken everything from her.
She cannot remember her name, her birthplace, her home, her parents, her family; she cannot even recall if she was anything other than a monster in a cage. Occasionally, the ghost of something she once knew floats unbidden into her mind's eye – a name, a house, a face – and then fades away. Try as she might, she cannot grasp these remnants of memory, cannot force them back into her skull: they slip through her fingers like so much dust and are swept away into nothingness.
But if she cannot remember what was taken, has she lost anything at all? The only reason she even knows that her memories are being destroyed is because her captors insist on continuing it: time again, she awakens with electrodes buzzing against her skinless crown, burning away what little she has left as smiling, porcelain-faced doctors proclaim the glory of the Radiant Empress. Soon, they will take even the memory of the taking, and leave her as a newborn – until at last she is ready to be remade in the perfect image.
But for all they have stolen from her, they have not taken the memory of magic from her, nor can they take her powers.
The porcelain-faced ones are too strong, too quick, and too clever. She knows that she cannot break out while they are watching her enclosure: her sharpening vision tells her so. Chained down and caged, they will overwhelm her long before she can break free. Many of them are wizards, their mechanically-enhanced bodies reeking of magic; she doesn't know if they can kill her, but they will certainly try. She cannot fight them, not while she is still bound. She can only long for their perfection.
The others, though… the unPurified lab assistants are vulnerable. They hate her, call her "brat," "bitch," "urchin," "cow," and "hellion." Their contempt makes them weak, makes them easy to fool, and none of them are mages.
So, she bides her time. She feigns weakness, marshals her strength, practices her magic while the guards are off shift, and waits.
Then, when one of the lab assistants arrives to unchain and prepare her for the final mindwipe, she strikes. As soon as her manacles have been unlocked, all it takes is a swift wrench of her front-right hand to break his arm, a quick twist to send him hurtling across the cellblock. As he tumbles away, she lurches out of her restraints, flings the door open and for the first time, begins to fly.
For months on end, she has been committing spells to memory and subtly imbuing herself with enchantments to strengthen her already-warped body beyond the boundaries flesh can set, and now she is free, floating higher and higher until her shadow seems to consume the fallen lab assistant in a spreading pool of darkness.
Horror-struck, the man scrambles for an alarm switch on the wall; a spell immolates him from the inside-out before he can reach it.
Once again, the ghost of a destroyed memory glides to the surface of her mind, a sting of long-forgotten emotion rippling through her being: she can't tell if it's remorse or self-reproach. But before she can try to focus on that emotion and try to hold on to it before she loses it forever, someone yells at her from the doorway, and the feeling vanishes like all the other ghosts of her memory.
Four huge orderlies thunder across the room towards her, their beefy frames augmented with the harness suits for enormous mechanical grappling claws – once used for hauling cargo, now used to restrain mutant test subjects. But she is beyond fear of their claws and their cattleprods and cruel, barbed whips. She is beyond being caged and humiliated and diminished. She is beyond everything, now. She already knows they can't kill her: the doctors couldn't even figure out a way of piercing her flesh. Now she has magic, and she has a gift for it that none of them could ever have expected; whatever disfigured her has flooded her veins with inexhaustible energy, has given her the power of the abyss!
In seconds, two of the orderlies are walking bonfires, their grappling claws reduced to molten steel by the heat of the inferno she has bathed them in. To their credit, the survivors do not flee; they've been encouraged to think of the test subjects as less than animals, and even in the face of certain death, they will not give her the satisfaction of retreating.
(How does she know this? The answers seem to pour from the empty air into her brain…)
Neither will she: with a wave of her hand, one orderly's mechanized claws turn traitor, bending inwards and wrapping around his body, constricting tighter and tighter until he bursts like a squished tomato.
The remaining orderly ploughs into her, trying to grapple her into submission – a tall order even for someone of his size and hardware. For a moment, she is briefly stymied by the pincers pinning all six of her arms to her sides, but then she realizes that the claws have left one part of her unrestrained: her tusk-like teeth rip open his shoulder, and with a howl of pain, he releases her.
"YOU LITTLE HELLION!" he screams, clutching his ragged shoulder. "You rabid bitch, you-"
A blast of searing energy silences his cries forever.
By now, the alarm has been well and truly sounded, and already the guards are charging in with rifles at the ready and Purified mages at their back. But nothing can stop her. Nothing in the world can hurt her anymore, not when the power of the abyss flows through her veins. Laughing in jubilation, she soars into their midst, heedless of the danger, heedless of the power raging across the deck, glorying as runaway magic oozes through the bulkheads, killing the crew and sending the airship spiralling towards the ground…
Five complicated hours later, she leaves the blazing wreckage of the fallen research vessel behind, floating off into the depths of the wasteland that was once the Land of Oz.
She has scoured the wreckage for anything that she could use, but abandoned most of it: after all, if she cannot be hurt by anything but the most powerful of magic, what use has she of weapons, protective clothing, or medicine? In the end, she has only taken two things: slung over her left shoulder is a bag of spellbooks, to enhance her mental archive of spells; slung over her right shoulder is a large satchel of ration packs, for the rare occasions where hunger takes hold of her power-infused body…
…And tucked under her middle-right arm is the unconscious body of the only surviving lab assistant. She doesn't know why she spared him, or even what she hopes to do with him. All she knows is that she would rather not be alone. He will hate her, as will all the rest, but something tells her that this could change in time.
Perhaps it's just her imagination, but the more she looks at him, the more she sees this sad, crumpled little figure as one of the Purified, with his porcelain face as smooth and unblemished as a doll's. He isn't Purified… but he could be. He could be as pretty and perfect as the Purified, but different. He could be kinder, sweeter, gentler; he could be little, just little enough to hold in her arms and cuddle.
She tries to focus on her past again. Didn't she used to own dolls when she was younger? That's what children do, right? She can't tell anymore.
The fading of her memories is not yet complete: already she can see what little remains of her past bleeding away through her impossible vision, pouring out of her skull and flooding the air like ink spreading through water, slowly dispersing themselves into the ether – beyond her reach. And in their place, she is beginning to see other things…
But if she casts her vision far enough, she can see things beyond the boundaries of No-Man's Land, where the Mentor and the Empress rule in their opposing cities. Each of them have armies, followers, nations and so much more at their command; each of them have people remade to be more like them – just like dolls.
Somewhere deep within her mangled brain, forever-agonized and twisted and torn in so many different ways as it may be, she knows that it isn't right that she is left alone, tortured and despised with nothing to her name. Even after all she has forgotten, she still knows that it's wrong that the greatest in the land are allowed to hang on to so much while she has lost everything; why should they have so many dolls to love them when she has nothing but ruins and ashes?
But all this will change. Oh yes, in time, it will change. She can play with dolls, too; from the things she's learnt in the labs, she knows how to make them out of just about anybody… and she knows enough to make them love her, too.
Hugging the comatose lab assistant jealously to herself, she hovers into the shade of a barren hill, spying the mouth of a cave in which she can take shelter. And there, shivering and alone but for her newest doll, she huddles herself into the warmest, darkest shadows of the cavern and begins drifting off into a deep and chilly sleep.
Her last coherent thought, before the darkness took her, is to wonder what her name had been. And all she can think of is the orderly's last screamed insult, right before she blasted him out of existence.
You little hellion...
…little hellion…
…hellion…
Hellion.
As the little doll slowly drew back to consciousness, she gradually became aware that she was being held in someone's arms. She knew at once this could not be Mother, for the blood-warm heat that she usually felt in the Hellion's arms was nowhere to be found, but she did not panic; there was a different kind of warmth here, familiar and not unwelcome – as if she knew whoever was holding her.
"Elphaba?" whispered a voice.
"Not now, Glinda," said another – and here, the doll was struck by another sense of familiarity. Now she was certain she knew the speaker, almost as well as she knew Mother. This was a friend, perhaps even a fellow doll!
"I think she's waking up!"
The little doll's eyes fluttered open, and she looked up into the eyes of the strangest-looking doll she'd ever seen: from brow to chin, her face was emerald green, and looking closer at her neck and the hands that held her, the little doll realized this stranger must be green all over. More to the point, she was still soft and fleshy, not porcelain… but that didn't really matter; after all, the little doll was still flesh, as well. Maybe she hadn't been finished yet. Or maybe this was just paint of a kind she hadn't seen before.
In spite of her confusion, the little doll couldn't help reaching out to touch her, running curious hands over the green girl's face and marvelling at the way it felt beneath her hands: it wasn't paint at all, but her natural colour. Clearly, this wasn't a doll, but a doll-to-be.
"You're pretty," she giggled. "You're so pretty…"
The green girl looked puzzled… and beneath it, the little doll caught a tiny undercurrent of fear. Suddenly concerned, she offered a reassuring hug: after all, this green girl was going to be a fellow doll soon, and it was only fair she did her best to make her newest sister feel at home.
"Hey, don't worry; Mother's going to love you," she assured her. "She'll love you no matter what colour you are."
"Oh god," a voice from the surrounding darkness muttered. "She did it; she wiped her brain."
"But that doesn't make sense," said another voice. "If what I read about in that journal is the norm, the mindwipe isn't supposed to happen until the conversion process is well underway, and for her it hasn't even started yet!"
"Maybe there's a procedure," a professorial voice muttered. "Maybe there's several spells that have to be cast, but for whatever reason, the Hellion couldn't finish it."
Strange glowing instruments swept across her, and for a moment, the little doll could only giggle quietly at the lightshow. A moment later, there was a sharp inhalation of breath.
"What?" the green girl demanded. "What is it?"
"She couldn't finish any of it," the professorial voice whispered. "This isn't the results of a spell at all; it's a bit of temporary influence, akin to magical mesmerism – nowhere near as strong as a proper spell and definitely nowhere near as powerful as the spells of the Grimmerie. Still, it would explain why she hasn't tried to attack us like the other dolls; it's meant for keeping her captives docile."
"But why didn't she go through with the whole process?"
"Nevermind why! Does that mean we can undo it?"
"Maybe. If it really is a purely mental effect, we could try associative reactions. Uh, how much do we know about her other than her name and birthplace?"
"You mean 'Dorothy Gale from Kansas' isn't enough?"
"Oh shut up, Gerhardt."
"Just saying, that seems to be the only identity she's needed up until now, nicht wahr?"
"Shhhh!"
From out of the darkness, a pale figure crept up next to the green girl and whispered a few hushed sentences in her ear. "We need to approach this delicately and gently, or else we risk waking up the other dolls. Don't try to tell her who she is right up front, and don't say anything that might make her scream: just plant ideas in her head, slowly and steady… or else we're all dead."
Taking a deep breath, the green girl looked down at the little doll and asked, "Do you remember your name?"
The doll smiled politely. "Mother says dolls don't need names," she said.
For a moment, the green girl looked equal parts angry and horrified. Then, she asked, "Does the name Dorothy Gale mean anything to you?"
The little doll shook her head.
"Do you know who I am?"
Another shake of the head.
"What about some of the people here? Do you know her?"
An anxious, pretty face famed in blonde curls crept into view. Maybe she was another doll-to-be, and the little doll smiled at the thought of it: if Mother made them both dolls, the green girl and the pretty blonde would be so happy that their friendship could last forever.
But how did she know that they were friends?
"What about Kansas?" the green girl asked.
There was a tiny sting of familiarity in the back of the doll's head, but just as quickly, it was gone; so, she shook her head again.
"Um… farms? America? Not long before the year 1900?"
"What are you talking about, Elphaba?" whispered another voice from the gloom.
"I'm just stating some of the few things she's mentioned about the place beforehand, okay?"
The green girl took a deep breath… and from somewhere below her, there was a muffled whimpering, followed by the sounds of something scratching at the green girl's legs. "I'm getting to you, alright?" she muttered.
Tentatively, the green girl adjusted the doll in her arms until she was looking down at the thing at her feet. "Now, do you remember him?
As she shifted, the little doll caught a glimpse of something dark and furry staring up at her with tiny, gleaming eyes. It was a dog, she realized. For a moment, she could only wonder why there was a dog in Mother's room: after all, Mother always said the wild mutts of No-Man's Land were good for nothing but clearing away unwanted bodies – or the occasional zesty snack. And yet… looking at this tiny creature, the little doll couldn't help but feel that sting of familiarity again, but stronger. And the more she thought about it, the more the feeling grew, a stab of recognition flowing out into a ripple spreading across her mind. Somehow, she was remembering something from before, and no matter how many times she told herself it was impossible to remember something from a time that didn't exist, she couldn't shake the feeling.
"Do the names Aunt Em and Uncle Henry mean anything to you?"
Again, that ripple of familiarity. For a moment, she almost saw their faces, and though they faded before she could grasp them, the doubt they left was real enough. How could she know these people? How could she remember people she'd never met before?
The uncertainty must have shown on her face, for immediately the green girl reached into her pocket and held out a tiny slip of paper – no, not just paper: a photograph. "Do you remember this?" the green girl asked, pointing out the sepia-toned faces.
And astonishingly, she did.
Dorothy had never seen a camera before that day: the Gales hadn't owned one – they'd never had the money to spend on such things, not with farming, building, repairs, food and their own health first priority. But when one of the neighbours had come along with a brand-new Kodak, they hadn't been able to resist the offer of a photograph. So they'd all stood in front of their house and posed for the camera, Uncle Henry grinning fit to burst, Aunt Em laughing at the sight of him putting on airs, and Dorothy…
Wait, who was Dorothy?
Why was she remembering this?
What was happening to her?
Somewhere overhead, a voice asked, "Don't you recognize the girl in the photo?"
The little doll's eyes slowly crept to the middle of the photo, and at last, she saw the figure standing there. And though she hadn't seen her face in a mirror in quite some time, there was no mistaking the little girl who was the centrepiece of this image, nor was there any way of denying that she and the little doll were identical.
"Do you remember what things were like before you were a doll?"
The little doll opened her mouth to say that she hadn't had a life at all before Mother had taken her in, but all that emerged was silence: suddenly, she wasn't so sure. The more she thought about it, the more she began to wonder about herself, and the more the comforting certainties of her happy life with Mother began to fade. She tried to tell herself that it didn't matter, that Mother loved her and would care for her better than anyone else in the world, but every time she tried to focus on it, an insistent voice in the back of her mind would ask, then why hasn't she made you into a proper doll? Why has she left you soft and fleshy when all her other beloved ones were made to last forever? What makes you so different?
Somewhere in the background, the little dog was barking loudly and the green girl was shushing it as best as she could, but the little doll's mind was growing more and more distant with every passing second. Everything felt so familiar, now: the sound of the dog barking flooded her brain with an inescapable sense of recognition, and all the faces looming at her from out of the shadows seemed to spark recollections in the back of her skull – of fear, anger, grief, remorse, reassurance, amusement, even happiness. But there was something else here, something else that sent the tumblers of her brain spinning, something in her dreams. Dolls weren't supposed to dream of the things she'd seen…
And suddenly, Mother was looming over them, yellow eyes ablaze, skinless limbs outstretched, jaws agape in a roar of rage, her body wreathed in wild sorcery; the Hellion in all her glory – with at least a hundred dolls at her back.
A gust of magic sent the little crowd of intruders tumbling in all directions, and the next moment, the little doll found herself flying out of the green girl's arms, to land with a thud on the bed. A moment later, the Hellion had swept in between them, barring the green girl's path to the little doll with a solid wall of magical power.
Dazed from the impact and the sudden influx of questions, she could only lie there as the storm of wild magic raged overhead, only dimly aware that the dog was now licking her face: she wasn't overjoyed to see Mother again, but neither was she afraid. She was recalling her dreams, following the trail of impossible things she'd seen in her sleep.
"I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING YOU WANTED!" The Hellion roared, her voice a million miles away. "I GAVE YOU THE LION, I GAVE YOU THE SLIPPERS, AND I MADE SURE YOU'D HAVE A CHANCE TO BE HAPPY WITH YOUR NEW TOYS! AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME! THE LITTLE DOLL WAS MINE! SHE WANTED ME, NOT YOU! SHE GAVE HERSELF TO ME AS PAYMENT FOR YOUR LIFE, AND SHE WAS HAPPY WITH IT! AND NOW YOU BREAK INTO MY HOME AND TRY TO STEAL HER AWAY!"
"She's not a toy, you lunatic: she's a person! In point of fact, she's a child!"
The Hellion let out a low, rumbling snarl at the back of her throat. "I see," she growled. "I see. I see how this works. Everyone gets their precious toys and DOLLS and playthings. Everyone gets what they want… except ME. Nobody likes it when I collect dolls. That's how the world works, is it? The bullies get everything and I get nothing? You just get to take and take and take AND TAKE WHAT ISN'T YOURS! Well I've had enough of things not being fair! I make things fair! You wouldn't give me back what was mine, so I forced you to share with me! I told you again and again I had your precious STUFFED LION, and you didn't care until I carved off his tail and sent it to you! And now, after I gave everything back, you're here tryingto steal from me again – ME, the only good girl on the playground! YOU DON'T DESERVE DOLLS!"
"What are you talking about?! This isn't a schoolyard and we aren't fighting over toys, and more to the point, I've just about given up on trying to figure out why you seem to think that's the case!"
"I think she's just a tiny bit past the reasoning phase, Elphie," Glinda whispered.
The little doll blinked. How had she known the blonde girl was called Glinda?
The dog was still barking. She'd seen this dog before, in her dreams: his name was Toto. She'd seen the green girl in her dreams too, heard her name "Elphaba" spoken again and again… but the green girl who'd been holding her in her arms a moment ago wasn't the same Elphaba. And yet she was – and wasn't – it was difficult to be certain: the boundary between reality and dream blurred.
But then she remembered: the dreams were memories of the past.
And at last, she saw with perfect clarity the realization that had been straying just beyond her reach up until now: she knew the name of the girl in her dream, the girl who had the same face as her; she knew who the girl in the photograph was; at last, the little knew who she'd been before the Hellion had found her.
Dorothy Gale.
Her name was Dorothy Gale.
And now that the name was in place, the rest followed as smoothly and relentlessly as water, blasting through the barriers in her mind like a river bursting through a dam. She remembered Kansas, her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, the farm that had been destroyed in one reality and remained in another; she remembered her journey through Oz; she remembered the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion, and Glinda; she remembered their arrival in the other world and the wonder and nightmares she'd seen. Most of all, she remembered Elphaba, lonely and bitter and jaded and almost explosive with rage, but kinder and more compassionate than anyone in Oz could have imagined.
And she remembered how her final dream had ended, the destruction of the Other Kansas and the birth of the Hellion… and at last, Dorothy understood who her other self was.
Meanwhile, the Hellion was still ranting at the top of her lungs. "You won't take her from ME! I claimed her, SHE'S MINE! MINE, MINE, MINE! I'll see you dead and shredded and bled upon the rocks before I let you steal her again! YOU HEAR ME!?"
Fire blazed in her outstretched hands, magical energies sparking across her skinless fingers, all six arms taking aim at one of the targets clustered before her. Elphaba, Glinda, Kiln and Gaunt all readied their own potent magics, Fiyero and the Terror Twins took aim, and Boq readied his axe… and all around them, dolls were springing to life, slowly moving to surround them.
And then, just as the Hellion was about to pounce, a voice cut through the clamour of the lair like a wire through clay, a voice so calm and quiet that Dorothy didn't even realize it was her own at first.
"Mother…"
There was a pause, as all eyes slowly turned in Dorothy's direction.
"I have to go home now," she said quietly.
The Hellion blinked, a look of astonished disbelief creeping across her skinless features. "You are HOME, sweet little doll. You belong with me, remember?"
"Then why didn't you make me into a real doll like all the others? Why were you so unhappy when you brought me here?"
"I wasn't unhappy! You could NEVER make me unhappy!"
"But you were. I don't belong here, and you know it: you didn't just want another doll when you first saw me. You wanted something you've never found before up until now, something you'd only ruin if you made me into a doll."
"Little doll, listen to Mother…"
"I see it all now," said Dorothy, and against all expectations, she found herself actually blinking away tears. "I'm betting even you didn't understand why you wanted me, but now I understand it now: you wanted me because you could sense what we have in common, because I reminded you of what you'd lost."
There was a nervous cough from somewhere behind the Hellion. "Uh, Dorothy, what are you talking about?" Elphaba asked.
But even if Dorothy could have stopped talking, she wouldn't have dared: this needed to be said. "It's been staring me in the face all this time: my house somehow ending up in No-Man's Land, Kansas burning, the way you were staring at Toto when you met Fiyero… but I didn't get it until I saw the dream-memories. We're the same person, don't you see? That's why you've wanted me all this time: I'm you."
"…WHAT."
"We're the same person, just from different worlds, different versions of Kansas: I've seen it all happen in memories that even those doctors couldn't wipe away. I saw it all happen though your eyes, saw you lose your skin and change until you were the Hellion. You're Dorothy Gale-"
"Don't… don't call me that."
"You're Dorothy Gale and you lived the exact same life as me… up until Unbridled Radiance took it all away. You lost everything: your home, your family, your mind, your body, your memories… and when you saw me, you thought you could get it all back if you had me by your side. Isn't that right? I've seen how you can read the world around you, seen how you think. And that's why you couldn't bring yourself to make me into a Doll; you didn't want to lose the one thing you had left of your old life."
"Stop it. Stop it."
"And that's why I can't make you happy." Suddenly, the tears seemed so much harder to hold back. "No matter how much you want to keep me, you're not going to be happier by hanging onto me. You won't be any closer to remembering what they took from you. You'll still be alone except for your dolls, and you'll still be miserable. And I'm sorry… but I can't stay with you."
The Hellion's eyes blazed, all six hands balling into fists. "You gave yourself to ME," she snarled. "You agreed to this. You WANTED this."
"My Kansas is still out there, Dorothy-"
"STOP CALLING ME THAT!"
Even the dolls retreated a few paces at this.
"My Kansas is still out there," Dorothy plunged on. "My Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are still alive. I still have a chance to go home; do you really want to take that away from me – just like the Empress took it away from you?"
Silence blossomed for a moment, and when the Hellion spoke again, her yellow eyes glistened with sickly black tears. "Everyone gets what they want," she hissed. "EVERYONE BUT me. And now even my dolls don't want to stay…"
Immediately, several dolls surged forward, trying to comfort the Hellion in spite of herself.
"But I'm not a doll," said Dorothy, raising her voice over the chorus of frantic voices. "You couldn't bring yourself to turn me into a doll, no matter how much you wanted to. Don't you see? I don't belong with you-"
"Shut up! Shut up, all of you! SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"
Once again, Dorothy collapsed backwards onto the bed as another gust of wild magical energy shook the caverns, sending dolls flying in all directions. And in that moment, everything seemed to happen at once: seeing the Hellion's anger beginning to boil over, Elphaba lunged forward, trying to grab Dorothy before she could come to harm; Glinda swept in behind her, directing a stream of lightning from her wand at the Hellion; Arkady, Gerhadt opened fire, Fiyero screamed at them to stop in case they hit Dorothy… and the Hellion finally lost what little remained of her temper.
The cavern erupted.
Dazzling purple light tore through the bedchamber, tearing into the walls and slicing massive chunks out of the ceiling. Elphaba barely managed to shield herself from the storm before it struck her, but the shockwave still flung her backwards into Glinda anyway; meanwhile, Gaunt and the Terror Twins crashed painfully against the opposite walls, lacerated viciously. Only Fiyero and Boq were left standing, neither of them fleshy enough to be hurt by ordinary means, even as the energies sliced open Fiyero's sackcloth skin and brutally dented Boq's torso; around them, dolls fled in all directions, for once too frightened to target the intruders as the Hellion's wrath radiated out across the tunnels.
"I WON'T GIVE HER UP!" she bellowed. "NOT TO YOU, NOT TO HER, NOT TO ANYONE! SHE BELONGS TO ME!"
Elphaba launched herself upright, a blast of emerald-green magical light pouring from her outstretched hands. The Hellion countered with her own outpouring of magics, a tide of lurid chthonic power coating the walls in diseased tendrils of flesh as it surged towards Elphaba; barely parrying the blast, Elphaba hastily chanted the words of a spell and sent it boiling towards the Hellion; tearing out a solid chunk of the ceiling with her bare hands, the Hellion used it as a shield, blocking the incoming spell with a grunt of exertion. And still the magical exchange only grew more brutal, blasting through the roof and tearing the walls apart, until the only thing preventing a cave-in was the sheer magnitude of energies flung across the lair, the sheer force of magical power simply dissolving the avalanche of rocks before they could land.
"WHAT THE HELLION WANTS…"
In desperation, Dorothy looked around for some way of helping, even though she had no power of her own… and in that moment, she saw her old clothes billowing to stop in front of her. Even half-slumped across the bed, there was no mistaking the fact that the Nultherite blade was still in her pocket.
"…THE HELLION TAKES!"
Almost without thinking, Dorothy snatched up the knife, not entirely believing that she could do what she was about to do.
"WHAT THE HELLION TAKES…"
The battle raged on around her: Gaunt, Kiln and Glinda were trying to lend their aid to Elphaba, but without much success; the Hellion swatted aside their puny hexes and bone quills, then flung all three of them aside like rag dolls.
"…THE HELLION KEEPS!"
Before long, Fiyero and Boq joined them. Only Elphaba remained standing, her back glistening with dozens of tiny spurs of Witch-Crystal as her power blazed across the crumbling caverns in a searing conflagration of green flame… but still the Hellion fought on, matching her move for move, pushing back her power with a torrent of sickly black-and-purple energy. There was only one way to break the stalemate, now… and it lay in Dorothy's trembling hands.
"AND WHAT THE HELLION KEEPS…"
Closing her eyes, Dorothy readied the blade: she had no choice, she told herself; this was the only way to save her friends. This was the only way to save Elphaba and herself from death and so much worse than death... but that wouldn't make what she was about to do any easier. In the end, she could only tell herself that she had no choice.
"…THE HELLION-"
And just as the maddened chant reached its climax, Dorothy leapt from the edge of the bed and plunged the knife into the Hellion's defenceless back – right between her first two rows of shoulders.
The Hellion let out a piercing, shrieking howl of pain, a solid wall of sound erupting from her tusked maw; all six arms flailed wildly as she struggled to dislodge the blade from her spine, her body writhing in mid-air in a desperate attempt to throw Dorothy off. Eyes clenched shut, Dorothy could only hang on for dear life and force the blade deeper, trying to pretend she was anywhere other than here, trying desperately not to listen to those awful, awful screams.
Around them, the storm of spells faded, the noise and clamour of blazing sorcery dying away until all that could be heard was the Hellion's agonizing roars. And all the while, the Nultherite worked its magic: it tore through the Hellion's defences, cutting through her distorted physiology, undoing her layers of protective energies and exposing her to wounds that even she could not withstand. Veins spilled open, organs ruptured, muscles tore, and millions upon millions of nerves sparked and faded out like the embers of a dying fire.
Dorothy knew this – she'd been listening when Kiln and Coil had explained the weaponry, even if she barely understood the science – but only on the most distant level. In that moment, all she could concentrate on the fact that she was a murderer now, that she was killing herself, that she was killing a twisted, broken, desperate human being that she could have become if things had been different.
She was a murderer.
And, just as quickly as it had begun, it was over: her final scream petering out, the Hellion lurched forward and collapsed to the floor with a deafening crash, throwing Dorothy to the ground as she did so. For a moment, all she knew of the world around her was a rolling kaleidoscope of floor and ceiling, before she finally tumbled to a halt at Elphaba's feet, Toto immediately clattering over and licking her face.
There was a pause, as Elphaba helped her up and hoisted her into her arms.
"Are you alright?" she asked, hastily checking Dorothy for injuries.
And in the silence that followed, Dorothy blinked, and realized she had no idea how to answer.
I am a murderer, she thought. I just killed myself. I thought she was a monster when she was me all along, broken and tortured and desperate for company, and I killed her. Uncle Henry would probably say I put down a rabid dog, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like I've just killed a member of my family. Right now, it feels like I've murdered my own sister.
"Is it… time… to s-sleep… NOW…?"
Dorothy spun around, heart hammering, mind suddenly flooding with images of skinless hands reaching for her. Instead, the Hellion remained slumped on the floor below, staring back at her. However, something about the glazed look to her yellow eyes told Dorothy that she hadn't actually seen her, that all she'd seen had been delusion and nothing more.
"Little doll?" the Hellion gasped. "Where is my doll? I… I need my doll. Please, I don't want to sleep without my doll…"
Her voice was different, now: the monstrous shifts in her speech were fading fast, dying just as surely as the rest of her as the preserving magicks slipped away. In their place, they left only the voice of an ordinary human woman, wearied and delirious and barely clinging to consciousness, worn hoarse by year after year of constant screaming. In fact, Dorothy could almost imagine that it might sound just like her own voice might, forty years on.
And in spite of all she'd endured, in spite of her fear and dread, Dorothy found herself slowly slipping free from Elphaba's arms. Crossing to the dying monster's side, she clasped one of the Hellion's gigantic hands in hers, hoping that her other self would sense it and understand that she wasn't alone, hoping that it would somehow be enough to make up for everything that had happened to her.
"I'm here," she whispered, her voice thick with tears. "I'm right here with you…"
"T-thank you..." her other self whispered. "Didn't want… to sleep alone. Terrible things happen… when I'm alone with the cold… and the dark. Sometimes… I can almost see… home…"
For a split-second, the yellow eyes opened wider than ever, as if she'd finally remembered Kansas, as if the memories burned away so many years ago had finally returned to her in her final moments. Then, with one low, shuddering breath, the Hellion went still.
A long, sullen silence descended upon the ruined bedchamber.
Then, Dorothy became aware of two things:
First, they were surrounded by dolls, all of whom were staring uncomprehendingly down at the Hellion's gigantic corpse.
Secondly, her mouth tasted of blood.
Elphaba let out a sharp hiss of breath. "Dorothy, your eyes!" she gasped.
Dorothy slowly reached up, and found something warm and metallic-scented slowly coursing down her face alongside her tears.
Blood, she realized dimly, I'm crying tears of blood.
A firework went off in the back of Dorothy's mind, fire roaring across the inside of her skull and rippling across her nerves. Something was being forced into her brain, hard and fast and relentlessly, sending ice-cold tendrils racing through her memories and stabbing deep into her thoughts.
She opened her mouth to speak – to ask what was happening, to apologise for dragging Elphaba all this way, to thank her for rescuing her.
Instead, all that emerged was blood.
"…help…" she coughed.
Then she fell, convulsing, into Elphaba's arms.
A/N: Any theories as to what might happen next? Feel free to share!