Welllll, it's been a moment, hasn't it? Sorry for disappearing again… But I wrote in my bio that I'm always around, and I'll always come back, and I plan on sticking to that! So here's another oneshot for this series :) Freshly written, too! Hopefully my writing hasn't got worse in this time. Also! I saw Wicked again (amazing, incredible, I loved it), which is always nice motivation for writing.
It had certainly been a long time since she was last here.
Standing silently, shrouded in darkness, both literally and figuratively, she felt a bit uneasy listening to the awkward conversation unfold in the room around her; as though she were intruding upon something she ought not to hear. But, then again, that was her whole identity now, wasn't it?
So she stayed still.
She could almost hear her heart thumping in her chest, despite her many attempts to quell it. She could not quite explain it, but she feared the memories this place brought back might be overpowering her. There was a strange sort of musky scent in the air, one which she had seemed to have almost forgotten; it brought with it a whole range of emotions. All the good, bad, awful, sentimental and wistful memories of her youth, all displaying the stark determination that she had cultivated over so many years of imprisonment within these walls.
It had been awful growing up here. She knew that. She had counted down the days until she left. One after the other after the other. She had been overjoyed when she finally gained her freedom. But, for whatever reason, there was still an element of nostalgia that seemed to hang in the air around her, just out of her reach.
It was the familiar voice of her sister that really brought it home, and reminded her of all she had lost. She had been so fixated on leaving, on making her escape once and for all, but could it be possible that she had neglected some of the rather sweeter aspects of her life here?
It was simple. She hated simplicity; she always had. Simple was never worth it. But sometimes it would be a nice relief, wouldn't it? To take a break.
Elphaba had not taken a break in a long, long time.
And now here she was, hiding in a wardrobe of all places, a stranger in the place she grew up. Though, seeing it again after so long, she could not help but wonder if she had always been a stranger here… She had never belonged, not really. Not the way her father and Nessarose belonged. No, she had a different relationship with the place, it was bittersweet and tense, albeit still slightly, dare she admit it, affinitive. It was where she had crafted her identity, built up her walls, gained confidence in herself…
But of course, none of this mattered anymore.
She was back here for one reason, and one reason alone. Her own melodrama had led her down a path she could no longer walk by herself; she needed help. And she needed the help of the one person from whom she had once hoped she would cut ties completely…
It seemed her every action just led to another ironic slap in the face.
Irony was nice. An excuse for a bitter chuckle at her impossible situation. A reminder that just maybe, under all these layers of insanity, there were some remnants of the wide-eyed girl she had once been. Irony helped to sharpen the edges that needed sharpening, and then some. Some might say she had become too sharp. Some might say she was always too sharp. Well, It was a good thing she had always been a master at tuning out other people's cacophony…
See, she had become rather resourceful in her time alone. She caused her own problems, she didn't need to rely on others to bring them to her. It was nice, being independent. It was freeing.
It was also lonely. Oh, so lonely.
Elphaba Thropp did not get lonely. She was self-sufficient and strong and wild and untamable and free. She was maverick and unconventional and willful.
And she was alone. However much she hated to admit it, she did miss her old life. The time when there had been so much less to worry about. When she had her friends and her sister to annoy with her stubbornness, and her studies and opportunism to paint her alluring dreamscapes that would entice her just a bit too much…
And then it all came crashing down. And she had nothing again.
Maybe that was why she had taken such a risk to be here today. Maybe the help she was seeking was not so much political support, as it was emotional…
She would stand her ground in the face of all danger, but that did not change the reality that, at the end of the day, when she was inevitably alone once more, it could all just get too much. Sometimes she wanted to scream at the sky for all that she had lost. Sometimes she did. Sometimes she wanted to sob her heart out into the greens of her hands.
Sometimes she did.
But these were all things she would sort out later, of course. This wardrobe was hardly the place to get sentimental. And there was a more pressing task at hand.
So as the voices around her quietened, she took a breath, and opened her mouth.
"It seems the beautiful get more beautiful… While the green just get greener."
A gasp from her sister, and the world came to a standstill once again. She had frightened her. Again. Another person who had a negative response to her presence. Would it never end? She closed her eyes for just one second, momentarily steeling herself, before reaching for the door, and stepping out, once more, into the sharp lighting of Colwen Grounds.
She would reach her goal, if it was the last thing she did.
If only she knew the irony that such a phrase would one day carry…