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"Alone and loveless here, just the girl in the mirror..."
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"Daddy!" Little Nessa's voice rings out down the hallway, soft and plaintive in the quiet of the night. "Daddy!"
The noise brings Frex hurrying down the hall, and Elphaba peeks her green head out of her bedroom. She steps into the hall behind her father as he slips into Nessa's room. He moves to her bedside. Little Nessa is lying tangled in the bedsheets, her face flushed. Frex brushes the hair from his daughter's forehead and whispers to her. "What is it, precious?"
"Daddy." Nessa's eyes are teary, her voice tight. "My legs hurt."
Elphaba rolls her eyes and ducks back into the bedroom. Nessa couldn't feel anything in her legs. It was probably just another plea for attention. Besides, her father could handle it.
Frex kneels down beside the bed, folding back Nessa's blankets. Nessa shivers as the sudden air touches her bare arms, and she tucks them into her nightgown. Her father sits gently on the edge of the bed, and slowly rubs her legs. Nessa can't feel the touch, but even just the closeness of her father soothes her. The strangeness and fear of waking up in the middle of the night disappears, and she can feel all but the last remnants of bad dreams fade away.
She closes her eyes, listening to the pulse in her ears and the sound of her father shifting on the bed. A moment later, she feels her father's hand on her forehead. "A fever." He mutters, softly, and she opens her eyes to see his concerned face looming above hers. She shivers, and he replaces the covers. "Just close your eyes, Little Nessa." He says, his face seeming to grow in the dim light until it is all she can see. She obliges, and she can feel the soft brush of his lips on her hot forehead as she drifts back into the land of dreams.
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Nessa raises her head from the bedspread, sucking a breath of fresh air in through her lips. She wills her breathing to even out. Rolling over on her back, she brings a hand up to wipe her eyes irritably. "My legs hurt." The words come from her lips, but they repeat in her mind in a high, childish voice. An echo of the past. Lowering her head to the pillow, she closes her eyes as she realizes that they really do hurt, and this time there is no one around to make it better. Tears threaten to spill from under her eyelids as she thinks of her father, always gentle to her but at the same time, fiercely protective.
She thinks of Boq, the sweet munchkin boy who reminded her, in some way, of Frex. She could see the same type of patient devotion in her father's eyes that she saw in Boq's... when he looked at Glinda. The pretty, perky blonde woman who was everything that Nessa wasn't. Glinda has a sort of magnetism that draws people to her. Nessa feels like she has the opposite. Something about her sends out a vibe that keeps people from getting close.
Finally, Nessa's thoughts move to Elphaba, and something twists painfully inside her. Elphaba had swept into her world like a summer storm and had taken away everything that was important to her. Because of Elphaba, she is alone.
Because of Elphaba, you can walk. The child's voice inside her calls out, but the voice is too weak, Nessarose doesn't hear it. Instead, her anger builds into a hard, cold ball that smothers the child and turns it into something else, bitterly sharp and icy.
Stop the stupid crying. The new voice says, and Nessarose sits up. Her motions more deliberate now, she wipes the tears from her face and smooths down her hair. Standing, she ignores the needles of pain in her legs and walks briskly to the doorway. Her face is hard, set, determined.
She has a county to run.
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AN: I do not own Wicked, Boq, Glinda, Frex, Elphaba or Nessa. I sure wish I did, though.
Thank you to nancystagerat and sweet saturn for not minding my e-mails, and a huge thanks to Heather, Kyla and Shilo for the chat session that actually got this chapter written! Woo hoo!
Thanks for reading,
Love,
B