(AN: And now we come to the end. I've rewritten a few Wizard of Oz facts so that they go along well with the story, and seem a little bit more...Wicked. Lastly, I might go back and edit "The Storm" chapter so we find out how Glinda knows how the ruby slippers work.)

(Also, I've some more lose ends to tie up, since I get this horrible mental image of both MadTV and Family Guy's parody of this scene, so it's gonna get fixed.)

The Downfall of Boq and Nessa

The Witch was dead. He had heard the rumors that she could be melted by water, but never believed them until he saw it with his own eyes. Steam was rising up from the floor, and she was screaming as if she had been dipped in black lime. It seemed like a very anticlimactic ending for someone he hated so much. She should have died differently - maybe he should have been the one to do it.

Once she was gone, nothing more than a pile of clothes and that tall-peaked hat lying upon the floors of her castle - the Scarecrow had called it Kiamo Ko - Boq suddenly felt empty. As much as he tried to deny it, she had saved his life. If not, he knew that her sister's botched love-spell would surely have killed him. He remembered the pain in his chest when the spell was cast, his last memories of his life as flesh.

Now she was dead, just as he had wanted of her: he had his vengeance.

So why didn't he feel better?

The rest of the journey seemed as empty as he felt now. But what made this all the more interesting was the fact that the Wizard was in fact nothing of the sort: just a little old man behind a curtain. However, he made good on his promise, or, at least, as far as he could. Though he appeared to be as grateful as the rest for the plush heart he had put in his chest and the heart-clock that he had given as 'proof' that he had a heart inside him, Boq really didn't feel much different.

Then the little humbug of a wizard vanished, before he could make good on his promise to take Dorothy back to her home.

Suddenly, a smile crept across Boq's face. The bubble machine of Glinda the Good appeared. He would now have his chance of finally meeting her, of knowing the truth, the definite truth.

Dorothy seemed pleased to see her as well. As she approached them, Boq thought he saw that the corners of her eyes were a little bit inflamed, as if made raw by the flow of water.

Or tears?

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Would you help me? C-Can you help me?"

"Why," Glinda returned. "You don't need to be helped any longer, dear. You've always had the power to go back to Kansas."

"I have?" she exclaimed. "How?"

"And more importantly," the Scarecrow scrutinized. "Why didn't you tell her before?"

"Because I didn't know," Glinda said. She then presented the book before them. "I learned about the spell that made the ruby slippers powerful in this book. It was the only thing left in the Witch's castle."

"So, how do I get home?" Dorothy asked.

"Oh, it's quite simple, really," she returned. "Just close your eyes, click your heels together three times and say where you want to go."

"And what about Toto?"

So that was the name of that infernal yapping thing.

"Just keep him safe in your arms and he'll go back with you." Glinda said, waving at the little yapping thing with her wand.

She exclaimed, but then Boq saw that the little girl was starting to weep. She turned to them all.

"I guess this means goodbye," she said. "I wish there were a way I could reach you here in Oz, 'cuz I'd write to you every day from Kansas, and twice on weekends!" She started tearing up, then walked over to the Scarecrow.

"Goodbye, Scarecrow." she said. "You know, you shouldn't call yourself a fool. Why, through everything we've been through together, and all the plans you've planned and all the thoughts you've thunk, I reckon you've always had the best brains all along!" She leaned up on her heels and kissed him on the cheek.

"Goodbye, Lion." she bade to the large cat, petting his mane. "Aww, what a cute little red bow! You know, I'm so proud of you: you were the bravest one of us, even in the roughest parts. I guess you've got plenty of courage to take on a dozen witches!"

"Aw, shucks, Dorothy," the Lion said. "If it hadn't been for you, I don't think I'd ever found my courage." She reached up and kissed his nose, then turned to Boq.

"Goodbye, Tin Man." she wiped at his eyes with her hands. "Please don't cry, I won't have you rusting away on my account." I'm not crying, Boq thought. "You know, Scarecrow and the Lion told me about what happened when they came to rescue me. I reckon that a real heart-less person would have just bolted and ran when those flying monkeys showed up. But you didn't: because of that, I think you have the biggest, kindest heart of any person I've ever known."

"Thank you, Dorothy." Boq said. If only that were true, he thought.

She took one of the paws of her pet and waved it at each of them, then turned to Glinda.

"When can I leave?"

"Whenever you like." she said. "Farewell, Dorothy, and Oz-speed."

She closed her eyes, clicked the heels together. "There's no place like home! I want to go home now!"

A sudden flash of red light and, to Boq's supreme surprise, Dorothy and her little yapping dog were gone.

"Well," Glinda said. "Now that that is settled."

The Scarecrow whispered something to Glinda, while Boq was trying to make up his mind, force himself to do what he used to do so easily. But now she was a somebody, a real somebody, a powerful sorceress. How could he approach her?

The straw-man was walking away. It was now or never.

"E-Excuse me?" he stammered. "Miss Glinda?"

She turned around, curious to see who it was who had spoken.

"Yes?"

"Do you remember me?" he asked. "We went to school together at Shiz, three years ago."

"I'm terribly sorry," she said. "But I would have remembered a boy made of metal."

"Miss Galinda!" he called out.

She turned around, a suspicious look on her lovely little face.

"What did you call me?"

"That was what you were called back then, right?"

She looked at him suspiciously, then walked off towards the Throne Room. He clanked after her.

"I think you have me mistaken for somebody else." she exclaimed.

"I know you're Glinda now," he said. "But you were Galinda back then." She turned around and he held out his arms. "It's me, Galinda!"

"Bick?"

He sighed. "You got after Dr. Dillamond for mispronouncing my name, but after three years, you still can't say mine properly."

She smiled a little easily. "Boq, that was it." She then looked at his new form. "What in Oz's name happened to you?"

"It's a long story."

"I have plenty of time." She walked over to the throne, over which the Great Head had once floated, and gracefully took a seat. His heart skipped a beat, he had almost forgotten how graceful she was, like she did not even walk upon the earth, but floated just over it.

"Now, please, tell me your story."

He sat upon a stool at the edge of the throne while Glinda listened intently to his story. Once it was finally over, she rose up from off the throne and paced about him a little.

"Boq," she said, using his right name for the first time in ages. "I feel you've been terribly misled about me."

"What do you mean?"

"And it's part...no, not part. It's all my fault. I see that now."

"What's your fault?"

She turned to him, her blue eyes brimming with tears that she refused to let fall. They just sat there, welling up in her eyes, threatening to spill forth her sadness.

"I should have told you before, all those years ago," she began. "But then I cared for no one but myself, and getting my way." She paused, sniffing back her tears.

"I don't love you, Boq. I never did."

Those eight words hit Boq like a mountain. He knew how he felt about her, he was practically smitten in every definition of the word. But she didn't even return the feeling? How dare she!

A bitter sensation appeared in the pit of his stomach. How dare she? No, how dare he. He had done exactly the same thing before...

"I tried to ignore you," she continued. "and hope to Oz you'd take my hints and go away. But that day when F...when he came along, you stood in the way of me and my 'prince.' I shoved you off on Nessa, and thought no more of it." She tried to sniff back the tears. "After hearing your story, I now see it." She looked away, a look of horror on her face.

"I've destroyed your lives."

"What? No! How could you ever do that! It wasn't you, it was Nessarose and her sister the W..."

"Don't say anymore!" she rose a hand to silence him. "I shoved you onto Nessarose, and she believed that you loved her for her, and not because of her wheel-chair. You were mad at me, that day at the train station, I see that now. I tried to talk Nessa out of it, but she was determined to believe that you were the one for her. She was so wanting to believe that she could be loved for herself, she became a tyrant for love.

"And it's because I didn't tell you the truth sooner that you tried to leave her, and she wounded you so." She scoffed. "Glinda the Good: I'm not worthy of the name."

He wanted to comfort her, to reach out and touch her face, but he felt guilt for thinking such.

"It's all going to change, Boq." she said. "I promised to be good, and I will." She turned back to him. "I sincerely and humbly apologize for what I've done to you." Quickly she turned away. "I don't ask for your forgiveness, for I know I don't deserve it."

He turned away himself.

"Where is she?" he asked. "Nessarose."

"Center Munch." she returned. "Beneath Dorothy's house."

He walked out of the Throne Room, not even turning back as he heard Glinda breaking out in tears.

Once, he had mentally thanked Dorothy for killing the Wicked Witch of the East: she wasn't there to imprison him anymore. Now he realized that he had always played the prisoner to Glinda.

He stood upon the lawn at Center Munch, the old gray farm-house looming like a portent of doom on the edge of time. Yet there it was, taunting him forever.

At last he understood, as he had that moment in the Throne Room when Glinda uttered those eight words that had shattered his whole world concerning her. He now saw himself as he had been toward Nessarose - in contrast, Glinda had indeed been very good and kind in her letting him down. He had done it with even less tact, so callously.

He had known that rejection from Glinda before he had even met Nessarose. He thought back to that time at the Oz-Dust, where he turned away from Galinda and instead to Nessarose. It was true, they did deserve each other. And he took her for granted, nay, he hated her. The charming, intelligent young Munchkin lad had been turned into a hateful man trapped in a metal suit.

He knelt down and reached at the grass, where she had laid. She was gone now, and there would be no more of them. He would live on, of course, for how long, he did not exactly know. But he would live on, and know that he could have at last found love, found the one who loved him more than anything in the world - for surely she did, if she was ready to break all of Munchkinland just to be with him. Maybe not the most comforting thought, but she had been a victim of Glinda's games, as much as he had been. But it was worse, for he had not only been a victim, but an antagonist, pushing her away until she was ready to kill him to keep him all to herself.

There was a nicer Nessarose Thropp. He had seen only glimpses of that one: at the Oz-Dust Ballroom, all along the journey back to Colwen Grounds. She had existed somewhere inside the woman he once hated. That woman wanted to love him, for only she understood him as he was now. Now, that he had alienated her beyond belief, driven her unto death, now he saw the truth.

Now I know I've got a heart, Boq felt at last, reaching up to his chest. 'Cuz it's breaking.

(AN: And...that's all, folks)

(Tell me what you thought of it.)

(Timeline of events taken from Of Saints and Sinners. Though it pertains to its own musical-verse saga, the timeline of events goes with all my musical-verse tales of Wicked unless said otherwise. I hope I delivered with this chapter. Of course, Glinda won't speak out in behalf of Elphaba because she swore that she wouldn't.)

(Thank you for reviewing. I now have hope that my other stories can succeed! :D Until next time, keep on Defying Gravity.)