A/N: Chapter 22! Well, this came out REALLY fast! It was one of those chapters that needed to be written. We're reaching the climax now. That feels amazing to say. I'm not sure exactly how much more there'll be, but I don't think I'll go over 30 chapters. I can't believe this is nearly over, and I can't tell you how grateful I am to everyone who's stuck with me for the year and a bit that Features has been going for. That's a crazy long time for people to stick with one fic, so I appreciate it more than I can say. And thank you, as ever, to those who review.

WickedObsessed: Oh, was she the German Elsa? I actually didn't know that! And yes, the new story is about Wicked! Thank you very much, lovely, and please stay safe yourself.

"Khanija!" Koa's voice was hoarse and choked with emotion. "Oh my... Khanija, you're safe!"

"Papa!" Khanija burst into tears, running over to them. She buried her head in Koa's neck, and the older Tiger's shoulders heaved. "Papa, Papa! I was so worried!"

Koa's eyes were filled with tears. "I can't believe you're here, sweetheart. I was so afraid something had happened to you."

"I'm safe," she said. "And... Lylak?"

The young Tigress was just beginning to peer from her uncle, and her eyes tore up too.

Khanija stroked her head against both Koa and Lylak. Elphaba herself was beginning to feel overwhelmed, but she had to take charge.

"Khanija, Koa, Lylak. I'm sorry, but we must go back inside. Fiyero will be back soon."

Just as the words left her mouth, Fiyero did indeed show up. "I've dealt with the men," he said. "Is everything alright here?"

"We must get inside, Yero," Elphaba said. "Quickly."

Fiyero nodded. "Of course. Let's go." Together, they herded the crying family inside.

Inside the warehouse there was chaos. All the Animals were packed closely together, surrounding them as they entered. Everywhere were frightened cries and huge eyes. Elphaba hardly knew where to look first, or what questions to answer. It seemed that the mute desolation they'd been living in had come to its natural end and was being replaced by abject fear.

"What's going on?" Someone cried out. "Is there danger?"

"Khanija, who are they?"

"Have we been found?"

"Are we in trouble?"

"Will we have to leave?

The beggar boys were running around wildly, not completely understanding what the Animals were feeling or what was happening but feeding off the general emotion of the room. Only Jozen remained stoic, standing next to Mareem whose hand was on his shoulder, both of them watching Elphaba tensely.

Fiyero appeared at Elphaba's side, giving her a long look that seemed to communicate his support. Elphaba latched onto his hand tightly as Aphia, the Elk they'd been fetching water for, approached them.

"Aphia," Elphaba said. "I'm sorry, we didn't get the water. We collected it, but then some men arrived, and we dropped it and..."

"Never mind that, Miss Elphaba," Aphia said. "What's going on? Are we in danger?"

"Not anymore. At least, not immediately."

"You'd better talk to them, Fae," Fiyero said. "Everyone's panicking. Only you can calm them."

Elphaba nodded and let go of his hand to walk to the centre of the room. Her glasses fell off her face in her haste to push through the Animals, but the room was too densely packed for her to see where they'd fallen. Not that it mattered; she didn't really need them anyway, except for reading. Amazingly, she could even see clearer without them. "Everybody, listen to me!" She raised a hand, and as if by magic, the room fell silent. All eyes were trained on her. Elphaba felt a shiver run through her at the way everyone was looking to her for leadership, but gulped and spoke.

"Two men were here." She decided it would be best to get straight to the point. "They were looking for us. Fiyero, Cowper and I overheard them." She didn't really feel like explaining her inclusion of Cowper in that statement right now. "They had two Tigers with them – Koa and Lilak, who are here with us, and we were able to free them. You needn't be afraid of the men, in the short term. Fiyero threw them off our scent for now, and I cast a sleeping spell on them to remove them from the premises. I repeat: there is no immediate danger. But the men were working for someone – we don't know who. Someone is looking for us."

An invisible current seemed to run through the room in that moment, unifying the Animals in a single note of shared terror. But at least they were quieter.

"What do we do, Miss Elphaba? Must we leave?" someone asked.

"I don't know," Elphaba admitted. "I believe we'll be safe here another night. In fact, it would be dangerous to leave now, with the men still around. They won't look for us here again. At least, not right away. We must stay where we are. But we must prepare to leave at any moment."

Murmuring broke out throughout the warehouse.

"What should we do now Miss Elphaba?" a Bear asked.

"Pack your things," Elphaba answered. Not that the Animals had much property anyway. "Make sure everything we have is ready. Don't bother about anything less than necessary. Your lives are far more important. If you receive the order to march, you must go, without returning for anything."

Here, Doctor Dillamond stepped forward. "How shall we be accounted for?" he asked.

"We shall take a register," Elphaba decided. "Every Animal shall be responsible for their own. If the head of every family could come either to me, or to Fiyero, or Doctor Dillamond, or Mareem," she glanced at each as she named them, and they nodded in acknowledgement. "We shall all be positioned at different spots in the warehouse. I will remain here, Fiyero will go to the far right corner, Doctor Dillamond to the left, and Mareem, if you could take the storage room?"

More nodding.

"We shall register all of you by family, along with the number in your care. Doctor Dillamond, have we any paper?"

"Yes," the Goat said. "Korèl has plenty for just this type of occasion."

"Thank you, Doctor. We shall not leave yet, but be ready, and wait for further instructions. I think we ought to take the register now."

"Of course, Miss Elphaba," said Doctor Dillamond. He pushed through the crowd, and in a few minutes, he had returned with Korèl and several reams of paper.

Elphaba delegated a stack to Fiyero, Doctor Dillamond, Mareem and herself, and each dispersed to their stations while the Animals waited in queues to register. The whole process took two hours, and the whole time, anxiety was rising in their midst like a whirlwind. But at last, they had all the names, and the Animals had broken off into their families to collect their things.

Elphaba took the opportunity to check on Koa and Lylak. They were still with Khanija, and Lylak was now pressed against Khanija's leg rather than Koa's - but she still wouldn't look at Elphaba.

"Khanija," Elphaba said. "Have you everything you need?"

Khanija smiled wearily, with mingled joy and grief in her eyes. "I think we do, thank you." A pause. "Miss Elphaba, I want you to meet my family. There wasn't time to properly introduce you earlier. This is my Papa," she almost burst into tears again, "and my little cousin, Lylak."

Elphaba's smile was strained. "I'm so pleased to finally meet you. I hope we can do everything in our power to help you."

Koa smiled gratefully. "Thank you, Miss. You've done so much already. Lylak and I were beginning to lose hope. We didn't think we'd ever make it out alive. And yet here we are, because of you. We're in your debt."

"Say nothing of it," Elphaba whispered. "We've been trying to find you for so long."

Koa looked away suddenly, but not before Elphaba noticed the empty look that passed across his face. "I only wish..."

Khanija's face crumpled, and she huddled closer to her family.

Elphaba wasn't sure if she should ask. But considering the danger they were in, she knew it was important. She sat down on her knees before them. "If you're able to share it with me... what happened to you?"

Koa heaved a deep breath. "I suppose you'll need to know. We were captured by a team of soldiers, while we were all together as a family." Elphaba remembered that Khanija had told her this part of the story. "Or at least, I was, with my wife, Khanija's mother. Most of the family escaped, along with my daughter. I suppose they hadn't expected to find so many of us in one place. It threw them off. But not for long." His breathing hitched, and his fur stood on end. "They took us – my wife and I – to a kind of camp. I'm not certain exactly where it was. They blindfolded us on the journey. We were fenced in with hundreds of other Animals and told we had to work; in construction, mostly. We were told that there were new projects needing workers, except it wasn't like a regular job. There was little food. No respect. They forced us to work long hours with no pay. Even the children." He seemed to subconsciously shift closer to Lylak. "Even the elderly, and the sick. For as long as they could get work out of us, they did. But we comforted ourselves that if we had to live like this, at least Khanija was safe. Until they started bringing in the rest of our family, and we became afraid. Every day we feared that they'd bring Khanija. They didn't, of course, but we had no way of knowing where she was, or whether she was alright." Koa stopped talking for a long time, breathing unevenly.

"How did you end up here?" Elphaba prompted carefully.

Koa gestured towards his leg. For the first time, Elphaba noticed that it was bent in a highly unnatural shape, and she felt ill. "I was injured," Koa said, prodding his useless leg. "One of the men beat me too hard. They could no longer get any productive work out of me." He nodded towards Lylak. "As for my little niece, she was too frightened to be of any use to them. I'm glad they didn't want her, if it saved her life, but never did I want this for her. Not ever..." he trailed off, before collecting himself. "The last way they decided they could use us was to make us sniffer dogs." He said it with contempt. "Our last task was to lead them to you. They had learned how to read us, like common, speechless animals, so we would betray our own kin whether we wanted to or not." The statement ended on a growl. "I suppose after that, they planned to dispose of us."

Elphaba's blood ran cold to hear his story. But there was one more thing she needed to know.

"Who are they?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "Who did this to you?"

Koa looked at Elphaba as though she asked who invented murder. "That's not the point," he said.

"Then what is?" Elphaba cried in frustration. "Who did it? I want to know. They have to stop doing this to you!"

"Don't you understand? The problem isn't who's doing it. The problem is that Munchkinland has no money."

That pulled Elphaba up short. "What do you mean?"

"Didn't you know we're in a financial crisis?"

"Of course I know! My father has spent the past five years counting his pennies because of it."

Koa frowned deeply. "Who's your father? Wait..." The blood drained from his face. "You're Elphaba Thropp... the Governor's daughter!"

"I..."

His eyes burst into feverish turmoil. "You're the Governor's daughter!"

"Of course I am. What's wrong?"

Koa shuffled away from her as quickly and as far as his leg would allow him. "What do you want with me?" he demanded, his voice rising in fear.

"Nothing! I just want to help."

"Papa, what's the matter?" Khanija interjected. "Miss Elphaba means you no harm."

Koa turned on Khanija. "How can you know that? How do you know she isn't conspiring against us? She could be feeding information back to the Governor about us, and how would you know?"

"Papa!" Khanija stood in horror. "Miss Elphaba has been nothing but good to us! What information could she possibly be giving her father?"

"I have no sympathy with my father," Elphaba said. "I'm here because my home isn't safe for me anymore. Aside from helping my friends..."

"Your home isn't safe for you... why?"

"My father hates me."

Koa narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

"Because I'm green, and I have magic... and it's my fault my mother's dead and my sister can't walk... and because I've gone behind his back, and I'm afraid of dying."

"Khanija - is this true?"

Khanija looked down. "I did suspect something of it, though Miss Elphaba has never said so to me, in so many words. But I did know that she felt it a threat to go home, yes."

Koa sized her up. "So, you would consider yourself one of us?"

"Yes, exactly. I know what it is to be an outcast."

"Why is it your fault your mother died, and your sister can't walk?"

Elphaba was silent. She'd never shared that with anyone. She hadn't even meant to bring it up. It had come out in the heat of the moment. But for some reason, she felt it was important to share this now. For the first time, it felt like she could share it. Still, she trembled as she forced herself to speak. "I was born green. It was a shock to my father. When my mother became pregnant again, he made her chew milk flowers so the baby wouldn't be born like me. But the flowers made Nessie come too soon, and she was born with her little legs all tangled up. Mama never woke up."

"You blame yourself for that?"

"Father blames me."

"Did he say so?"

"Yes."

Koa was pensive. "I believe you. I'm sorry for accusing you. And for what it's worth, that wasn't your fault."

"Thank you."

"You don't believe me?"

"No."

He looked at her poignantly. "Very well. Where were we?"

"The financial crisis." Elphaba couldn't help sighing internally with relief that he wasn't pressing the matter.

"Of course. The problem is that Munchkinland has no money."

"Why is that the problem?"

A snort. "Because when people are in distress, they like to find someone to blame for their problems."

Elphaba was struggling to keep up. "I don't understand."

Koa sighed. "When people have no money, it makes it easy for them to blindly follow whoever promises them wealth. And whoever promises them wealth also promises them power. But power is threatened if you are partly to blame for your hardships, or if there's no one specific to blame. So, what's the person promising wealth and power to do?" He left a prolonged silence. "Offer a scapegoat."

"Papa, you aren't making sense," said Khanija.

Koa carried on as if she hadn't spoken. "Oz has long been plagued by financial hardship. Now, partly, that's to do with unwise investment, as well as mismanagement by our leaders, not to mention the impact of war. But there's another facet of power – it's the idea of 'otherness.' If there's no 'other,' there can't be a pure race. So, you see, to maintain power, people must blame someone else for their problems, and that someone must be different from them, in some manner." He smiled strangely. "In short, Animals are the perfect scapegoat for a nation – in this case, a province – that has no money."

Elphaba's mind was reeling. The pieces were beginning to come together. She couldn't deny that the patchwork Koa was creating was logical – disturbingly so – and somehow familiar, as if she'd known this the whole time, but it hadn't quite reached the level of conscious thought. "So you're saying... the people who hurt you... are doing it for money?"

"I'm saying that there are no 'people' doing it. You're fixated on the idea that Animal segregation is a horror carried out by the minority. Miss Elphaba, if you really are on our side, then you're the minority."

"But that's not true!" Elphaba burst. "It can't be!"

"But it is. This is no small matter. Not anymore. Maybe it never was."

"I can't believe that a whole land, even a whole province, would be capable of this."

"Then you really are naïve. Do you honestly believe man is naturally good? It may be that not every individual is directly responsible for overt atrocity, yet. But like it or not, we are all involved."

"I'm not!"

Koa was very quiet for a long moment. "I take it you were very isolated growing up?"

Elphaba bit her lip. "What has that to do with anything?"

His stare bored into her. "Maybe, for once, you can count that a blessing. You've learned to think for yourself because you've never experienced the sort of love that comes from following the crowd." For the first time, Koa smiled kindly. "I take my hat off to you. Don't ever follow the crowd, Miss Elphaba. You may think you're immune, but none of us are. It's those of us who overcome our own nature that ensure the survival of goodness in humanity."

Elphaba wanted to cry. But then, something else Koa had said registered. "Wait. You said that people follow whoever promises them wealth. Who are they following?"

The atmosphere between them was heavy. "I think you know that."

The horror was that she did know. But she didn't want to believe it. "My father?" she at last choked out.

"He's not the only one. I told you, the problem is in people, not in our leaders. But yes."

"Why?" the tears were beginning to fall. "Why is he allowing this?"

"This isn't the first time in history that something like this has happened, and I daresay, it won't be the last. I can't read Governor Thropp's mind, of course, but my best guess is that he wants power, and in times like these, this is the best way to achieve it. We were put to work in construction, like I said. Most of the buildings were statement pieces, designed to enhance Munchkinland's prestige. But construction of this scale is expensive. Slave labour is the best way to accomplish it."

Elphaba covered her mouth with her hand. "He does want power," she sobbed. "He wants the power that he lost when I was born. It's why Nessa will succeed him, and not me. It's why he wanted Nessa to marry, and it was a trading mistake that made him choose Fiyero."

Koa looked solemn. "Then it all adds up. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you all this, Miss Elphaba, but it couldn't be helped."

No, she didn't suppose it could be helped. Rage was building that she hadn't experienced before. It was smoking inside of her, begging to be let out. What would happen if she did, she didn't know. Perhaps it would destroy everything in its path. Perhaps it would destroy her. But it was no use anymore; Frexspar Thropp had gone too far. Things had changed, and she needed to change with them.

Maybe, just maybe, she thought, there's a reason you were born a witch.