Sorry for the cliff-hanger last chapter; I just had to do that:) Thanks for the kind reviews, everyone! Belated happy Easter;)
Stay safe and stay home, as always.
Started writing: 24.01.2020
Finished writing: 25.01.2020
Chapter 22
Melena
Was it shock that shone in the greyish eyes that seemed to pierce her down? Or was it sadness? Or maybe both?
Elphaba felt her fists clench and unclench of their own accord, and she hesitantly stepped forward. Her sister's face was white as a wall, and the evidence of crying was clear on her cheeks.
"Nessa," Elphaba breathed out, voice shaking and fingers trembling as she bent down to pull her little sister into a tight embrace.
She felt the brunette's fingers dig deep into her shoulder, holding her too tightly.
"Oh, Fabala."
"Nessa," Elphaba repeated, slowly freeing herself from her sister's grip but still holding on to her slim hands. "Nessa, what's going on?"
Nessa didn't answer. She just lowered her head to stare at her fingers, folded on her lap, and caught in the gentle yet firm grip of her sister. And Elphaba felt her breath hitch in her throat.
She could see the tears welling up in the brunette's eyes.
Slowly, Elphaba let go of Nessa's hands and turned around to close the door. It was so quiet in the house, she noticed, and fear began to creep into her mind.
"Please," Elphaba said, eyes wide in shock and panic of what was to come.
Nessa turned away as though she was trying to hide her tears.
"Momma's…" she started hoarsely, and Elphaba could feel herself pale.
"What is it?" she exclaimed in shock, but before Nessa could answer, she slipped past her and hurried up the stairs, leaving her sister alone in the threshold.
Her heart was pounding fast, and her mind was racing a mile a minute as she strode down the hallway and turned to the closed door. Elphaba could already feel the fear rise in her very inside, and she clutched the cloth of her jacket harder when she approached. Then she opened the door and stepped inside, relief almost immediately taking over her body.
"Oh, thank Oz," she breathed, practically falling against the door as she sighed.
"Elphaba," Father exclaimed in surprise.
Momma turned around, her eyes widened. "Fabala."
And Elphaba's face fell.
The tear-stained cheeks of her mother, the bloodshot eyes of her father…
Elphaba stumbled forward. "What's going on? What happened?"
She wanted to fall into her mother's arms and pull her close, but something in the way she looked at her made her stop.
"What are you doing here?" Father asked sternly, or maybe that was his shocked voice, Elphaba couldn't tell.
"I got a letter from Nessa by express; I should immediately come home," she pressed. "What the—hell is going on here?"
Father crossed his arms in front of him. "I'm wondering about that as well."
Momma whirled around. "Oh, not that again. Have we not discussed that enough already?"
"Are you complaining now, Melena?" Father hissed. "You?"
Momma wrung her hands in exasperation. "Frex, please. It was years ago, can't we just-"
"What was years ago?" Elphaba blurted out, but her parents didn't answer.
"It doesn't matter how many years ago it was, Melena," Father exclaimed hotly. "It could have been fifty years ago, and I'd still feel the same."
Tears were welling up in Momma's eyes as she said, "I'm sorry, Frex, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have-"
Father snorted. "No, of course, you shouldn't have. What were you even thinking?"
Elphaba frowned. "What are you talking about? What happened?"
"What happened?" her father repeated. "Your mother had an affair, that's what happened."
Elphaba's mouth fell open.
"What?" she blurted, eyes wide with shock.
"Fabala…"
"Are you serious?! Is this supposed to be some joke?" she bit her lower lip in exasperation. "You cannot be serious. Momma, this is not happening, right?"
But her mother lowered her head and averted her eyes, and Elphaba felt tears welling up in her eyes.
"How long has this been going on?" she managed to ask as she slowly sat down in the armchair in the corner of the room, arms wrapped tightly around herself.
Momma shook her head. "It hasn't been going on. It happened a long time ago, even before you were born."
Elphaba closed her eyes for a moment.
"B-But how?" she stammered. "Why?"
She saw her father shake his head, forehead dropping into his palm as though he still couldn't believe this was happening.
"I… It was a rough time back then," Momma said quietly. "Your father had been in the Emerald City for business reasons for over a month already…"
"Which, of course, excuses your actions," Father snorted without the slightest hint of amusement.
"I didn't say that," she blurted hotly. "I never wanted to excuse anything; I'm merely explaining."
She turned to Elphaba, wringing her hands as she continued.
"We hadn't seen each other for so long and… well, I was lonely, I guess. And one afternoon, there suddenly was this young man in our threshold, asking for a glass of water. And I asked him inside and he… he was very kind -strange but kind. Oscar was his name, he said. We talked, and he told me of his long rough journey and…"
"And you couldn't wait until your husband returned," Father said, and Momma narrowed her eyes.
"Oh, stop it already," she pressed between clenched teeth. "You don't even know half the story."
"Because you refuse to tell me."
Momma looked ready to jump up from her seat.
"I'm trying to, Frex, right now," she hissed. "Let me explain."
She turned to face Elphaba again, who had her knees drawn close to her chest.
"I… I was foolish, I know," she said softly. "I was so much younger back then—naïve, you could say. And he was a fairly good talker—an even better listener. When he offered me a sip from his funny little green bottle, I couldn't refuse. Everything that happened after is… a blur."
Elphaba stared at her mother wide-eyed, and she could see the clear evidence of shock on her father's face in the corner of her eye.
"Are you saying that-?" he pressed out.
"I don't know," Momma admitted. "I don't know, but I don't think so."
Elphaba didn't know whether she wanted to cry or laugh.
"You don't know if you've been raped or not?" she exclaimed in horror, and her father sucked in a sharp breath.
"Well, I wouldn't call it rape…" Momma began, and at the same moment, Father jumped up from his seat.
"Then what would you call drugging a woman and then taking advantage of her state, sleeping with her?!" he blurted, and Elphaba wasn't entirely sure if he was still mad at his wife or at the man from the past.
"But rape always means doing it against the other's will," said Momma.
"Oh, so you wanted it?"
"Well, I was drugged, after all."
"So, it was rape."
"No, I-"
Elphaba pressed her lips to a thin line. "This won't get us anywhere."
She got up from her seat and tore her hair as though she had never before felt such exasperation.
"Momma…" she said hesitantly. "You… Was it only that one time?"
Her mother nodded.
"Then it wasn't an affair. Or… you never saw him again, right?"
For a moment, Momma's brows knit together in a faint frown.
"I-I don't know," she stammered after a second. "I can't remember his face, just his voice."
"You don't-" Father shook his head in disbelief. "How can you not remember his face?"
Momma pressed her lips to a thin line.
"He was insignificant, it was… an accident, of some sort," she lifted her head to look at her husband. "Shouldn't this make you… happy?"
Father snorted. "Of course. Happy. See how happy I am about this."
Elphaba let her chin fall into her palms as she lowered herself into the armchair once more.
"I just… I don't understand," she murmured, "How could this remain a secret for such a long time?"
She looked up into her mother's eyes. "How could you keep this a secret for so long?"
"Yes, how could you?" repeated Father accusingly, and Elphaba could see the tears welling up in Momma's eyes.
"I was ashamed. How could I not be?" she said, and, turning to Father, she added, "And telling you so shortly after the wedding would've destroyed everything."
"As it did now," Father exclaimed. "I mean, what did you expect to happen? What reaction did you think you would get?"
Slowly, Momma rose from her place and stepped forward. She might have planned to approach Father, but his look was so cold and hurtful that she turned and stepped closer to the window instead. Further away from him and Elphaba.
"I feel terrible," she breathed. "And I know nothing I'll say or do will make this any better. But it was a long time ago and- "
"And you think that could make it any less damaging?" Father asked.
Elphaba stroked over her forehead in an attempt to smooth out the deep frown. "But Father, it might feel as though it had happened just yesterday to you, but think about Momma-"
"There's no time that I'm not thinking about her!" he interrupted hotly.
Elphaba ignored the sharpness in his voice. "For her, it happened almost twenty years ago and- and she never saw that guy again—also, it might've been rape and… just think about it."
For a moment, it was absolutely quiet in the room. Wringing her hands, Momma turned around. Her eyes were full of tears, shimmering right behind her thick lashes, but not falling down.
"Frex, please," she sounded almost desperate. "I-"
"You know what I find so absurd about all this?" Father suddenly said, and after a short pause, he added, "Wasn't it just a month ago that you were the one accusing me of having an affair?"
Elphaba let her face drop into her palms.
"Haven't we agreed that it wasn't an affair?" she murmured, and suddenly she felt like crying.
How could this day have become so utterly different from what she'd expected it to be? When she'd sat in the carriage on her way to Munchkinland, she had thought of death -black curtains- to welcome her, not of crying parents in her father's study, debating whether her mother's 'sidekick' from all these years ago should be called an affair or not.
"Frex, please," repeated her mother. "You must understand; it meant nothing to me. The next day I couldn't even remember what had happened, and he was already gone and… it needed almost a month for me to scratch all the scraps of memory together. Even then, I didn't bother trying to remember it properly."
She slowly approached him, standing still only when she stood right before him. "I don't know what I could possibly do to make up for this. But if there's something -anything- I could do, I'd do it without a second thought."
Father tilted his head to one side. The look on his face now was equally exasperated as Momma's.
"I don't even know if you can make up for it, Melena," he said soberly. "This relationship always was about trust, and trusting you isn't something I could do right now."
"Now that's just nonsense!" exclaimed Elphaba and jumped to her feet. "You've always trusted each other; you can't just erase the past."
"Exactly," Momma stated quietly, a note of defeat in her voice -or was it tiredness? "I've made a mistake, and now all that trust has been crushed. It's just how life goes."
Elphaba's brow furrowed deeply as she slowly began to pace up and down before her parents. "So, you're saying you've entirely stopped trusting each other?"
But Momma shook her head.
"No," she said. "Frex hasn't given me a reason not to trust him. But I have."
She knit her brows together, exasperation now clear on her face as she looked Father directly into his eyes.
"We might want to go downstairs now," she suggested, and her voice had never sounded as emotionless. "Dinner time is long overdue."
"What will happen next?"
The two sisters had retreated into Nessarose's chamber after dinner and now sat in the girl's room in silence. Nessa with her back turned towards the door and Elphaba sitting on the window sill, they just sat there, indulging in their own thoughts.
Nessa had eventually been the first to raise her voice.
Elphaba turned around. "I don't know."
She slowly let go of the hem of her skirt and looked at her little sister with a furrowed brow. "I really don't know."
Nessa turned to face her, and Elphaba's heart clenched when she saw the tears that were shining in her sister's eyes.
"I'm just so afraid," Nessa confessed. "What if they'll never make up? What if it'll always be that way?"
Elphaba shook her head. "Don't think about it like this, Nessie. They've been in love for so long-"
But Nessa didn't let her continue. "Papa's so hurt."
Slowly Elphaba climbed from the window sill and sat down in front of her sister.
"But they'll get through this, I'm sure," she said hesitantly as though she didn't really trust her own words.
"Tell me," said Nessa after a short moment of silence. "How did it all happen again?"
Elphaba leant back against a table-leg. "I don't know the details if that's what you want to hear. Anyway, Father was in the Emerald City for business, and one morning, there was a young man at the front door who asked for some water. And they began to talk, and Momma found he was quite nice. When he offered her a drink from his green bottle, she took it. Everything after happened in a blur for her. She told us she couldn't even remember what happened until a month after."
Nessa's brows knit together in a faint frown. "And when exactly did it happen?"
For a moment, Elphaba let her head fall against the post behind her, then she answered, sighing, "Sometime before my birth. If my calculations are accurate, it must have been around-"
Suddenly, her eyes widened. The words stuck halfway up her throat, and she felt herself pale.
"Sweet Oz," she breathed and slowly got to her feet.
"What is it?" exclaimed Nessa in shock, but Elphaba didn't answer her.
Instead, she stumbled towards the door and pulled it open. "Oh, sweet Oz."
Never in her life had she been so fast on such shaky feet and quickly Elphaba strode across the hallway and pushed open the door to the living room.
"Momma," she called but found nothing but an empty room.
Turning around, the green girl repeated her call. She hurried through the room and opened the door to the kitchen. Empty; again.
"Momma!"
And when she turned around again, there she suddenly was, appearing out of nowhere, standing right behind her. "What is it?"
And, upon seeing the paleness of Elphaba's face, she added worriedly, "Oz, Elphaba, what's going on?"
Elphaba grabbed her mother's arm far too tightly as she said, horror-stricken, "Momma, when did you say did it all happen? The thing with this young man?"
Momma's brows knit together in a frown as she lost herself in a distant memory.
"Sometime in the summer," she answered after a second. "May? June, maybe?"
Elphaba shook her head in shock. "Oh, no. Oz, please, not that."
The worry was by now clear in her mother's face, and Elphaba felt her slim hand on both her arms as though she wanted to shake her.
"Elphaba, what are you talking about?" she asked hurriedly and Elphaba couldn't contain the dry, unamused laugh that escaped her lips.
"Everything fits together perfectly," she said more to herself than to anyone else, and then looked up straight into her mother's eyes. "Just reckon back. The dates, Father's absence…"
Momma's eyes were filled with confusion. "Elphaba, speak in full sentences, I have no idea-"
"Momma, what if you didn't get pregnant after Father's return but before that?"
Her mother sucked in a sharp gasp.