A/N: Wow, I'm sorry. I kind of forgot about this story for a while. Maybe it was an intentional mind block since I didn't have any ideas at the time…

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Elphaba:

Glinda didn't say anything for a long moment. I scanned the people standing around- the groups of frenzied Munchkinlanders attacking the castle with long-repressed vigor, the sober dignitaries arriving for the funeral, the even more sober clergy members gathered for the same reason. I turned my eyes skyward. If they say so much as one word about conversion to me, I will lose any faith I have gained, I swear to- I laughed suddenly at this, making Glinda look at me as though she thought I had gone mad- to God. Looking past a group of solemn, praying, priests and a particularly exuberant group of Munchkin desecraters, I spotted him.

"Oh, damn," I murmured.

"What is it?" asked Glinda. "Elphie?"

"It's my personal consanguineous demon from the depths of any hell in which you care to believe," I responded. She looked in the direction of my gaze.

"The Wizard? Where?"

"No," I sighed. "Shell."

"Oh…"

"Yes, fortunate woman that I am, I have two such demons."

I was not in the mood to deal with him. I groaned. I was being an awful bitch, I supposed. He did, after all, have a right to be here. Nessarose was his sister, too. And she'd been a better one to him than I had, no doubt. I paused to consider that. Well, she'd been there, at least.

"Elphie," said Glinda under her breath. "He's coming over here."

Oh, hell, she was right. Couldn't he just let sleeping dogs lie? Must he really force an awkward, false, conversation that would create in me- and in him if he had any shred of integrity left- a strong urge to vomit into the nearest receptacle?

Apparently so.

"Elphaba!" he cried, coming over to me. "And Lady Glinda, how delightful." She gave him her society smile, I gave him my fiercest glare. "You're still angry over my visit two years ago?" he asked.

"You called my children, what was it, 'obscene demon scions?'" I spat. "And what else did you say, that I was a traitorous whore, I think that was it. And didn't you ask Fiyero something to the effect of 'Are you a masochist or just very imaginative?'"

Glinda couldn't help herself at the last one- she snorted quietly. I swiveled my head to give her a dark look.

"Aw, Elphie, you're still mad about that?"

"Words do not suffice to convey the extent of my fury at this moment," I informed him. "If you believe propaganda, or write it, or in fact propagate it, two of which I believe you do and one of which you are too dull to do, you would do quite well to get rather far away from me rather quickly before I turn you into a toad," I said offhandedly. Shell glared at me and backed away, changing his expression to one of contrite remorse and joining a group of somber clergymen mingled with dignitaries.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped out of reflex and whirled around. I breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that it was only Fiyero.

"Hey," he said. "Will you talk to me?"

"Are you done being a callow, concupiscent…male?" I asked.

"If I knew what that second word meant, I'm sure I'd say yes," he said, grinning. I sighed.

"It means lustful."

"I'm not done being such, then, but I'm done doing so overtly."

"Find a synonym for done."

"Finished doing so overtly."

"Thank you."

His face turned serious.

"Fae. Have you even cried yet?"

"I don't cry."

"You're a liar."

"Don't criticize the manner of my grief and I won't give you any more vocabulary lessons."

"I can't criticize the manner of your grief when you're not grieving."

"Stop it, Fiyero," I said more harshly than I wanted to. He was undaunted.

"You need to grieve, Elphaba. I don't want you to follow the path you're on right now…I don't want you closing yourself off to the world. To me."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"Well, that I don't mean to do." I sighed. "It would certainly be a fitting memorial, though."

Fiyero looked bemused when he pulled away slightly to look me in the eye.

"How do you mean?"

"You'd know better than I, Yero my hero. You were there, you were the one who told me that she pulled her head into her religion like a turtle into its shell after I left, from heartache and embarrassment." I considered what I had said and gave a false half-laugh that came out sounding like a horrible cackle. "That pun was not intentional, at least not on my part. I cannot, however, say the same for my father."

Fiyero looked genuinely confused now. "Shell, my brother's name," I said. "The point is, Fiyero, that she closed herself off from the world. She had begun the process even before I left. She would have liked very much, I think, to shab the blame for her loneliness off on me, and probably tried, and had I been here for any significant amount of time I would most likely have let her, but now that I think about it she was always leaning that way, off to crazy fundamentalism." I sighed. "I wonder sometimes whether she would have been religious like that even if she had arms." I turned to face him. "I mean, do you think we form ourselves to be unlike our parents and, if we have them, our older siblings? Do you think it was my overtly professed atheism- more than likely developed at least somewhat in response to Frex's fervent faith- created that same faith in Nessa, so that she could try to develop an identity separate from mine? I certainly affected the way she was treated among our peers."

"I think that while you're a prime example of striving to be different from your parents, you can't count your terrorism, Fae. You didn't know."

"I can count the second round," I said stubbornly. "And I never said I was, either."

"But you didn't end up soulless and atheistic, did you?" Fiyero asked. I sighed.

"But I wonder…" I muttered as something struck me.

"What?" he asked.

"That change of heart- of soul, to be completely truthful- happened just about the time I discovered that Frex wasn't my father. I think we most definitely have something here, Fiyero. Funny, I'd always imagined the key to my pathologies would be a bit more complex than just wanting to be different from my parents. I hadn't honestly expected to be so ordinary."

Fiyero laughed heartily. "You are many, many things, Fae, but ordinary is not one of them."

I sighed and stared off into the distance, watching Fala climb a tree on the other side of the courtyard while Liir worried his fingernails just watching her.

I had been so careless and haphazard in forming my identity, believing somewhat throughout most of it that my skin had done it for me, or that I had no soul so it didn't matter much at all. Thinking about my perceived soulless state often called into question whether I really even had an identity at all.

How, how, how the hell would this affect my children?