Hey! I'm updating again! My school's on winter break, so I actually have time, especially since I've been planning this one for a while. Enjoy!
When Elphaba would return home with Nessa after school, every day she would run to her father's arms and cry.
"Why does everybody hate me so much?" she would wail Occasionally Frex would have to put up with tiny punches on his arm as she tried to beat out her misery on something.
"It's because they don't know you." Frex would answer, smoothing the black locks just long enough to be pulled back into a simple braid. "Be patient and kind to them all, and you will find in due course you will be loved for the good person you are." Frex had to admit, by now he didn't even have to pretend to love her. The bright girl always brought a kind of unseen joy with her, even as she tried to assume the role of mother and serve breakfast to the family in the early morning, as she took care of her sister without being asked as a mother would, as she tried to comfort her father in anything that troubled him, wheather she understood it or not.
"But father, they call me ugly and strange and…" Young Elphaba's throat choked up as she gasped the last word. "Wicked."
"You are not wicked, Elphaba," Frex spoke more sternly now, determined to force the idea into his daughter's head. "No matter what anybody says, you are everything the wicked aren't."
Elphaba took those words deeply to heart, and would always face the next day's horrors bravely until she could come back home and cry.