A/N: Just a little warning. There is a character death in this chapter, and the drama will not end there. I'm sorry and please don't come after me with the pitchforks!
Tell me it's not true
OUR WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ - A CHARLATAN?
In recent months, confidential papers from the Emerald Palace have been published, detailing the horrendible policies and plans that our Wonderful Wizard was going to put through, which included rent and tax increases which meant that our poorest citizens would lose their homes and livelihoods.
This weekend, it has also been revealed that the citizens of Oz may have been lied to about another crucial piece of information - namely about the so-called Wicked Witch of the West. Our great Glinda the Good issued a personal statement directly from the Emerald Palace to tell all.
"The Wicked Witch was no more than a fabrication. A means to shut up a nineteen-year-old schoolgirl because she saw his atrocities and refused to play a part in such a twisted wheel of deceit." Glinda had reported. "I should know because I was there the day the Wicked Witch had been born in people's minds. For those awful years, I had been trapped, I was young and foolish and cared about material things, even when I cared about my best friend more."
The statement comes after a personal appearance from Glinda the Good, and the former Captain of the Guard and the Wicked Witch, who was joined by two small children yesterday. It appears that not all is as it seems. Not only is she not dead, but the figure - although green as grass did not look at all like the portraits that had been printed during her reign of terror as she stood beside our ruler. If not for her strange hue, she could look as normal as Ms Goodness herself! The recently crowned king and queen of the Vinkus return back to their lands and will-
"You're actually entertaining that rag?" Elphaba questioned her husband as she entered the dining room with all three of their children.
Fiyero looked up and shrugged. "I was bored. And there's nothing else to read- don't say a word."
She only smirked in response and settled Ash down into a chair next to Fiyero and helped the twins into theirs before she sat beside him.
"Will they believe mama now?" Liir asked, looking up at them.
"Let's hope so, Bug," Fiyero answered.
"And if it doesn't happen right now it hopefully will as time goes on. People need time to adjust and process everything they've been told, and it's a lot to take in in a week." Elphaba added as Glinda entered with Anna, and the young girl ran over and sat in the spare chair between Liir and Leila.
"Ooh! Did you get to the part about your story yet?" Glinda asked. "Oh, and our lunch will be ready shortly."
Fiyero shook his head. "Glin, we wrote it, hell, we lived it, I don't think I need to see it printed."
Conversation over lunch was light and full of laughter from the children, and the three adults tried not to think about how long it would be before they were all together again.
"Your nanny is a quiet little thing, isn't she?" Glinda spoke thoughtfully.
Elphaba nodded. "Why? Remind you of anyone?" she smirked.
"Not at all, Miss Greenie."
"Ooh, there's one I haven't heard for years. Still better than any green vegetable those morons could think of."
Glinda giggled and shook her head. "I'm sorry. I couldn't resist."
"I bet you couldn't." Elphaba laughed. "She usually eats with the rest of the staff at home, so I guess she's just not used to it. I have tried to include them all but they would all much rather stick to protocol." she shrugged.
"I've missed this."
Fiyero nodded as he fed Ash in between his own mouthfuls. "The food from the kitchens was always good."
Glinda rolled her eyes, smiling. "Not just that... I mean us."
"If you start getting sentimental, Glinda-" Elphaba aimed a fork at her.
"You're leaving me, how can I not?"
She sighed and shook her head. "I know, but we have to go back at some point, the twins have school."
"And we have our own province to lead," Fiyero added, to which Elphaba wrinkled her nose at.
"I know... I just wish it didn't have to be so far away."
Fiyero shook his head with a grin. She'd get over it soon enough. "There is always the twins' birthday and Lurlinemas. Or Fae's."
"No. No, that gives her the chance to prepare something! Not happening." Elphaba shook her head.
"Oh, Elphie! I haven't thrown a party for you since -"
"I was forced to celebrate it back at Shiz. Exactly my point. No."
"Why not, mama?" Leila looked up at her.
"Because where I'm concerned, things end in disaster. Glinda, you can do something for these two but you leave me out of it."
Glinda pouted again.
Fiyero laughed. "Just be grateful she's giving you that."
"Can we go and play now?" Leila asked.
"Yes, but not too long, and don't get your clothes messy. We leave in an hour and a half." Elphaba told her, shaking her head when all three children left the table in a flurry of noise.
"How likely are they to stick to that?" Glinda smirked.
"About... as likely as there being snow in July. In the impassable desert. And depending on the day and the mood, you'll never be able to tell which one influences who more." The green woman commented, looking over at Ash who had started to whimper and reach for her.
"Mama!" He pouted as his father picked him up and handed him over to her.
"What is the noise for? Hm?" She gently spoke, bouncing the toddler on her lap which made him stop crying instantly and he giggled. "Did you feel a bit left out?"
Ash then decided to grip on to her and pull himself wobbly to his feet, and she held him to make sure he didn't fall and she kept a close watch on him.
"You can definitely tell he's feeling a lot better." Glinda smiled.
Elphaba nodded. "Thankfully."
"I've noticed something... none of the children cry."
"Oh, they do!" she laughed.
"Mostly when they're sick, the twins will make so much noise you'd think they were dying," Fiyero added and looked at his wife. "Don't say it."
Both women laughed at that and shook their heads.
"Fifi, you're exactly the same when you're sick." Glinda pointed out.
"And if anybody is gonna take after your dramatics as they get older, it's gonna be Leila-Rose," Elphaba smirked and he huffed, pouting. "Oz, you're ridiculous!" she leaned over and kissed his cheek.
Glinda giggled and looked up when someone entered the room.
The guard cast an uneasy glance at the oblivious royal couple before looking over at the blonde. "Yo-your Goodness? There's a crowd starting to form outside... A-are you due for another speech?"
Glinda shook her head, eyebrows creasing in confusion as her friends paused in their quiet flirting to look at the guard. "No. I have a scheduled meeting later on once my friends go home but..."
"Maybe send a few guards among them, find out what their intentions are?" Fiyero suggested.
Glinda nodded, a pointed look at the guard who glared at his former captain. "Tenamehn, see who you can spare and get a general feel of them. It might be nothing but... the past is still fresh in people's minds, no matter how good we worked them yesterday."
An hour later, the bags were packed away into the carriage as everyone prepared to say their goodbyes. Ashender was held by Gia as the twins were smothered with hugs and kisses from their 'aunt'.
The young nanny looked on warily at the crowd gathering outside of the Emerald Palace, an uneasy feeling in her gut despite the palace guards reporting that there would be nothing to worry about. The crowd were there to say their goodbyes and to be sure that they were being told the truth.
"Alright, I think Liir is ready to hide for the next century now, Glin." Fiyero laughed as the little boy finally escaped her grasp and ran to Gia's side.
"I can't help it! I'm going to miss you all so much!" Glinda pouted, crushing him in a hug before she looked around for Elphaba.
He shook his head and detached her arms from around his neck. He didn't see his wife beside him. "Fae?"
"She's over there, sir." Gia pointed to the green-skinned woman who was being approached by a dark-skinned little girl holding a small bunch of daisies and wildflowers in her hand.
"Uhm... e-excuse me, Miss Witch?"
"Norah come back here now!"
The little girl ignored her grandmother and watched the woman she had addressed turned to face her.
Elphaba looked down at the child, annoyed at how she had been addressed but said nothing about it. Oz, maybe I have gone soft! she scoffed quietly. "Yes? Can I help you?"
Norah thrust the flowers up in her direction. "I picked these from my nana's garden. They're pretty like you and I want you to have them."
The girl's grandmother continued to shout after her and the surrounding people fell silent, wondering what the former wicked witch would do next.
The annoyance melted away as quickly as it had boiled and a small genuine smile appeared on her face. She took the small bunch and knelt to her level. Yep. Definitely gone soft, Elphaba! she thought. "Thank you. What's your name?" she asked, looking into the child's dark eyes.
"Norah."
"Pretty name. And how old are you?"
The child held up six fingers.
Almost the same age as Leila and Liir...
"Are you a real-life Princess?"
Elphaba chuckled softly and shook her head. "No. I'm a Queen." she smiled as wonderment took over the child's face.
"Wow!"
Nearby people murmured and watched the scene unfold, Fiyero grinned with pride, watching her.
"That's a long way from somebody who despised children when we were at school." Glinda smiled.
He nodded. "It was people in general, Glinda. Old or young."
"True." she giggled.
"E...Efalba." Norah tried to say her name when Elphaba had given it and shook her head. "Elf!" she declared proudly.
Elphaba grimaced and shrugged. "Close enough." she sighed, smiling again, standing upright as Norah finally dashed back to her grandmother. Elphaba turned and headed back to her family. "Say it and I will break your pretty blonde neck," she smirked.
Glinda giggled and shrugged. "She almost called you Elphie!"
She rolled her eyes as Leila hugged her around the middle and she smiled down at her, shaking her head when her child started meowing like a cat and giggling. "Oz... and this is my child?" she lifted her up and hugged her close.
Suddenly, two shots were heard and the guards and Fiyero sprang into action, shielding the little group with their rifles raised, every man calm as people scattered and screamed out terrified, parents shielding their children from the chaos. Elphaba had ducked as if to shield her daughter from the attack and she froze at a very familiar scream and a shout for help. Glinda...
She forced herself to look up while the men scoured the area for the shooter and she felt her knees give way. She collapsed to the floor and let Leila go as she saw Gia on the floor surrounded by blood and her two boys beside her. "No... no, no..." she gasped and forced herself to crawl across the concrete to check them while Glinda kept the pressure on Gia's gunshot wound with her skirts. "Please... please, no." She could feel her panic rising, her hands shaking as she checked Liir over, crying in relief and hugging the unconscious boy to her chest when she felt his heartbeat and his chest rise and fall and panic turned into adrenaline. She turned her blurry vision to Ashender, still curled up tight against his nanny, the blood surrounding them both. Too much... too much... she kept repeating to herself. "Glinda..." her voice was quiet, too quiet to be heard over the hysteria. She swallowed. "Glinda!"
The blonde looked up, looking just as terrified as her best friend. "I... Elphie I..."
Leila turned to Anna for comfort and they trembled in the arms of Anna's own nanny. "Mama!" she shrieked, scared, crying and wanting her mother.
Elphaba tentatively reached out to touch Ashender, feeling his blood on his shoulder and her stomach lurched. She swallowed down the acidic bile, shivering and she shook her head. Using her free hand to wipe away her tears she pushed down onto the wound she found there. "Your time is not now, son," she muttered. "Don't you dare. Do you hear me, Ashender Fiyero? Don't. You. Dare."
"There!" one of the guards called as he spotted the Loyalist, and Fiyero took off after him as he fled the scene. He chased him into the centre of the city where he caught up to him and pinned him to the wall of a jewellery store.
"Try it. And watch an entire nation come from the west for your head on a spike." he threatened as the Loyalist tried to grab for his rifle.
"You're nothing but a traitor, Tigelaar. You, that whore of a witch and those-" the man was cut off by Fiyero punching him in the jaw.
"Say what you will about me. But you will not disrespect my wife or my children." he glared and he was pulled off of him by a guard and the man was arrested by the Gale Force soldiers. Fiyero followed them back to the palace just in time to see his boys and Gia loaded into a cart surrounded by medics, Elphaba seemed to be frozen into place on the floor, Leila-Rose clinging to her, trembling. He forced his feet to work and he almost tripped over his own feet to get to the cart as fast as he could. "Let me through!" he barked, glaring when one of the medics stopped him. "They're my sons, let me through!"
"Sir, we're doing all we can but you need to let us do our job. The one boy probably hit his head in the fall, but we need to try and save the other and the young woman."
"Fifi, come on..." Glinda's voice was gentle, and she grimaced at the helpless look in his face. "They have the best medical team in the city working to help them. They'll be fine and taken to the hospital soon..."
He shook his head. "No, I'm not leaving them!"
"There's nothing you can do right now..." she dragged him away.
He blinked and looked at her, taking in her dishevelled and blood stained appearance, one look at Elphaba told him she was in exactly the same way, only she appeared to have shut off. She hadn't moved, hadn't even acknowledged his presence. She was just sat on the ground with her arms wrapped around their daughter. He walked over and collapsed on the floor beside her and he held her to him.
At the sight of her father, Leila sobbed harder and gripped her mother tighter.
"It's okay, princess. Your brothers are gonna be fine," he told her gently, kissing her head. He had to believe that. He couldn't lose either of them, it wasn't an option. He barely heard the orders to search for more Loyalists that may be scattered around. The earlier crowds had long since left, scared for their lives and had gone home where they were safe. Suddenly, the Tigelaar family felt a very long way from home.
"Me..."
He glanced down at Elphaba as the barely whispered word left her lips. "Fae?"
"They were aiming for me..."
The statement only made him tighten his hold around her. He had no idea what to say.
Soon they were taken to the hospital where they waited in agonising silence that stretched on for an eternity.
Glinda the Good was rarely angered. She had matured over the years since her school days, and she was much slower to rise to her fury than she had been before. But now her anger was justified as she stormed through the corridors of the Emerald Palace. "Where is that evil disgusting...?"
"In the interrogation room, Your Goodness," Tenamehn reported.
"Show me."
"I don't think-"
"I said show me! My best friend was shot at and her children are fighting for their lives!"
He gulped and nodded, leading her to the room and opened the door.
Glinda walked inside, glaring hatefully at the smug-looking man sat at the table.
"If water can't kill the bitch, a bullet will."
Glinda spat out an incantation to silence him. "You will hold your tongue," she told him. "You are loyal to a man who is long gone and wasn't a good man to begin with. The Wizard was a tyrant and more horrid than anyone I have ever known." she ranted. "I know people don't expect me to amount to much, I've got by on looking pretty and saying the right thing for too long, and now I'm trying to correct a very bad situation, something that should never have happened in the first place. You shot two innocent children, and you better hope that they survive, otherwise I will not be responsible for what Elphie does to you. And I will let her do it and help her get away with it."
The man spat at her and was promptly hit over the head with the butt of a rifle of a guard.
"Even Southstairs so too good for him." Glinda snarled and walked out. She inquired about the whereabouts of her daughter before heading off in that direction. She bundled the little girl close to her chest upon seeing her and she breathed deeply, inhaling her familiar scent that would instantly calm her fraying nerves.
Finally, the four-year-old broke and she sobbed into her mother's chest, clinging to her as though she were her lifeline, and Glinda was devastated and heartbroken at the sound. She shuddered to think about what she would be like if she was in Elphie's situation, what would become of her if her darling little Anna had been standing just two inches to the right as she said her goodbyes to her best friends. "Oz, Elphie...please let your family be alright..."
Leila-Rose has eventually given into sleep curled up on a bench, the surface cushioned by an emerald green jacket she had been carrying, and her head lay in her father's lap.
Fiyero gently moved her so that he didn't wake her when he stood up and he headed over to Elphaba, stopping her pacing in her tracks and he just held her close in a tight hug.
"I can't lose them, Yero... I couldn't... my magic...-"
"They had to remove the bullet, Fae... to heal him would have killed him..."
"But I could have helped her! Oz, she's just a kid herself!"
He shushed her softly and kissed her head. He didn't need her to voice what she was thinking. He already knew they would both have taken that bullet for both of them and each other. "Who gave her that?"
"Hmm?" she looked over his shoulder at her sleeping girl and shrugged. "She... uhm... she was probably cold and one of the guards must have given it to her..."
He grunted at that. "Well, she's not keeping it."
She nodded in understanding. Neither of them needed reminders of the past.
"Mr and Mrs Tigelaar?"
They both looked up as the old Matron beckoned to them.
The woman took a visible step back in surprise at the sight of Elphaba before she recovered. "I have good news, but I'm afraid I also have some bad news. I'm sorry, but we were not able to help the young lady brought in to us. We did all we could to save her but the loss of blood was just too great and the bullet had penetrated her left lung. One of the children is being treated for a concussion and we will be monitoring his head while he sleeps, and we've managed to stabilize the other."
"When can we see them?" Fiyero asked.
"Soon, a doctor will come and show you to them. My condolences on your loss." she headed back through the door.
"She was a child... She was only a few years younger than us and she had so many plans! She didn't need to... to..."
"I know. Oz, I know." he sighed, rubbing her back while she cried.
"Wh-what will we say to the kids?"
"We'll figure it out, Fae. Did... did she have any family?" he winced guiltily at not knowing.
Elphaba paused, thinking. "She... she had siblings... A brother and two sisters, I think... she didn't talk about her parents much..." she sighed, thinking of the many heart to heart conversations she'd had with the girl. She mentioned a mother with hatred in her tone and spoke of no father. "I can only assume that she didn't have the best relationship with her mother, whenever it came up, she used to snarl and change the subject..."
He nodded. "We'll tell her family when we get home..."
"Which part of the Vinkus did she come from? It's just... she never told me..."
"She was from the North East... The Yunamata clan. They'll want to seek revenge for this attack."
"Great... So we've inadvertently started a war?"
"We did no such thing, Fae. We were attacked and we've lost someone very dear as a result."
Elphaba nodded and sighed. She hated when he turned into the diplomat she forgot he was, but she guessed it was his way of dealing with what had happened until he was able to fully process it privately. "Oz, I just want to take our babies and go home..."
"And never let them out of sight." he finished and kissed her head. "As soon as we can, we're getting out of here. We'll take her back with us, give her the burial she deserves."
She nodded again, and if it wasn't for the fact she was afraid Ashender would likely bleed out on the journey home, and Oz only knew what happened with Liir, she'd take them now and put her family in the first carriage out of the city.