Collecting You
By gypsylemon
Rating: R
Author's Note: Yes, I know there's also a book, which I read, but this fic takes place at the end of the Broadway play. Even so, it adopts many aspects from the book, so in a way it's a crossover/AU.
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me except the ideas.
Chapter 6:
She had slipped into the night unnoticed; gloves and an almost veil-like hood further hid her from eyes on the outside looking in, eyes that might catch her and give her away. She had gone the same way she had come, sneaking through alleys, ducking behind dumpsters and corners to avoid people; only now, she did all this much faster, with no sense of where she was going. All Elphaba knew was that she had to leave without delay, and that she could not be seen.
The shock of learning what she had done had not yet died down. It pushed her forward, screaming in her ears and flashing pictures before her eyes. She saw Glinda, wide eyes staring up at her, terrified. Glinda, begging her to stop, never getting any peace. Glinda, hurt by the woman she called her friend causing a pain so raw and inhumanly cruel; Glinda, screaming and crying, struggling to get away from her; The fear in her eyes.
Elphaba did the math; it was Glinda's apartment, so she left instead. After all, had she stayed, she would have been suffocated by her haunting betrayal that hung in the air, making everything around her impure and as painful as water.
But what scared her the most was how she could not control her own mind. She was making love to Fiyero, and it didn't seem as if anything at all was wrong, but then it was Glinda - nothing was how it seemed. Instead of it being pleasant and sweet it had been rough and harsh.
For Glinda's own sake, Elphaba made the decision to leave. To save her friend, she had to get away from her, because she now knew that her own state of being was not to be trusted. But she was just a green woman, one that no one ever trusted; it seemed as if all of Oz was just waiting for Elphaba to stop trusting herself and join the rest of them in their racism and loathing.
The posters and scenery surrounding her reminded her she was not just hated for her color, now, but for her wickedness. Her melting was a nationally celebrated holiday; they had parades held in her name, although now they were all over and done with, giving Elphaba a clearer escape route then what she had arrived on.
Then again, upon her arrival she had been in such a dire condition that she could have walked right passed a parade with her green skin fully exposed and not do a thing about it.
Her steps were quick, often stumbling on pieces of garbage that littered the streets from the festivities. Images in her head swirled about, forming more images of a hurt and frightened Glinda, a Glinda that wants nothing more then to have Elphaba out of her life; they urged her to move even faster, but fears of being singled out by unseen eyes kept her pace steady and inconspicuous.
Gloves covered her green hands, her arms were sheathed in a itchy, dark gray coat from the back of Glinda's closet, and her hair covered much of her face where the hood could not reach. Now, all she had to do was keep her head down, her eyes trained on the road and her mouth shut, and she was bound to make it safely away from Glinda; she couldn't trust herself any longer in such close quarters to one she could hurt so badly.
Fear gnawed at the back of her mind and the pit of her stomach; she wondered what would become of her if she was discovered, but only briefly, for her thoughts constantly jumped back to her blonde, beautiful friend who was now destined to be as distant and dead as everyone else Elphaba dared to love; Elphaba's love was a curse, and for her to love was to condemn.
She felt like the Wizard, whose love for power had risen him to the level of a dictator of an entire world. Now he had run away from his mistakes, just as Elphaba had, and just for a moment, she wondered where he had disappeared to and how she could get there.
Fear and paranoia and self-hatred coursed through her veins, some voices telling her to run, others telling her to stay unnoticed. Elphaba's limbs twitched in confused as two rivals battled for control inside of her. The cold beat upon her relentlessly, icy winds encircling her small body, lost in a maze of towering green buildings, but she paid none of this any mind for there was worse, there was always a worse situation she had been in.
Turning a corner, the sound of voices pricked in her ears, slurred, blurry voices coated with intoxication. Elphaba kept her head low and hoped to go unnoticed, but her hopes were dashed to bits.
Elphaba did not know this, but each year when Oz celebrated her death, some citizens would paint their faces green, dress in black and walk through the streets in a masquerade, as if they were the Wicked Witch herself. It was just a game, done for fun and amusement, imprinting itself on Oz's past as a new tradition. But this tradition of dress-up was not the driest way to celebrate, for it rewarded those in green paint with a splash of water from onlookers.
There was not a soul who did not know of how the Witch died. The small child, Dorothy, had tossed a bucket of water on her hideous, green form, thus burning and melting her; a messy demise. For fun, this tradition was one to be kept alive.
The drunks laughed and roared as if they would pass out the next instant, but surprisingly enough there was one soul sober enough to be drinking water. They lent their glass to the cause of preserving tradition and, with a chorus of laughter, splashed it at the green woman in costume that walked by at a quick pace.
With a short-lived, catlike grace, almost as if she had heard the water screaming "make way," the green woman dove to the left to avoid the main blast of wetness. But some of it caught her on the side of her face and she let out a restrained cry as she stumbled and fell to her knees. She bent over the stone road, immediately bringing the collar of her coat to her face, shaking with pain and fear and maybe even rage.
Of course alcohol tends to blur the senses, making pain a difficult emotion to read upon a face, so the onlookers and the splasher bursts out in rounds of new laughter, some even putting down their glasses to clap - they thought this green woman was an actress!
As she rested, bent and twisted in agony on the road, one of the drunks jogged forward, took hold of her forearm and began dragging her to the bar. "A drink for the actress!" He demanded to anyone that would listen or hear. He pushed Elphaba down into a chair, and she landed where she fell, all her energy put into trying to fight off the pain, trying not to scream.
When she emitted a whimper through clamped lips, a hand came to slap her on the back. "Don't worry, luv. Drink's coming!" Elphaba moaned in pain and clutched at the burning part of her face with gloved hands as laughter encircled her once more.
"Funny actress." One man observed, sticking his face close to Elphaba's as if to examine her when really he could see nothing but a green blur. His breath was stale and slipped through Elphie's nostrils. She turned her head away. He lifted a thumb to her face and slid it across her cheek. "Paint's not comin' off. Might be some pretty thing underneath it all." Elphaba tried to pull away, but his hand came down on her face, rubbing harder.
"We got ourselves the Witch!" A small group sang tunelessly. "Ding dong, she ain't dead yet!" The laughed and stumbled into each other in a dizzy sort of dance, tripping over stones and chairs and their own feet. Elphaba struggled for leverage, but someone kept pushing her back down into the chair.
And then someone else came in, wearing a uniform of rich green cloth with a gilded pattern along the front; Elphaba caught it sparkling out of the corner of her eye, still nursing the side of her face that burned like a raging inferno. Strong hands gripped her shoulders and hauled her out of the chair.
A thumb pressed against her cheek and rubbed downwards, pulling at the skin below her eye. Frustrated, the guard repeated this act a few more times before checking the tip of his finger for any paint. There was none to speak of. He turned her head to the side that had been splashed with water, examining it closely; the skin was turning a darker, blacker green, as if the flesh was being burned.
The guard studied her closer before his lips cracked into a menacing smile; his hands left Elphie's face and came to his rifle. "You've been hiding from us, haven't you."
Elphaba had no time to flee; the guard swung the rifle forward, slamming it into the side of her head.
Stars exploded before Elphaba's eyes and she fell forward. The pain was amazing, as if her head was splitting open from where it had been struck. She was about to black out when a steel-toed boot connected with her stomach, and bile rose in her throat. Her knees instinctively curled up around the hurt, arms coming to her head, too afraid too touch yet too concerned to ignore.
The guard aimed another kick at her stomach and a cry wrung itself from Elphaba's throat. She felt the warm trickle of blood washing down her face before the dancing spots that obscured her vision enlarged and turned dark, turned off the sound, turned off the pain. For a little while.
