Chapter Text
“It didn’t have to be this way. It didn’t have to...”
Elphaba sat on a small stool, huddled in the shadows of a damp basement in Kiamo Ko Castle. The world outside celebrated her death, but there, in the heavy silence of those walls, she finally allowed herself to collapse. Every breath was an effort, a reminder that, against all odds, she still existed.
On the fateful night of her supposed melting, while chaos ensued with Dorothy’s arrival, a miracle pierced the darkness. A note, delivered by Chistery’s trembling hands and hidden among the patches of Fiyero’s clothes, had changed everything. As she turned the paper, her heart stopped for a second before exploding into a frantic rhythm. There was her redemption. That was how she knew: he was alive. He needed her. He had a plan.
All the suffocating agony of the last day, which had made her walk on the edge of the abyss, finally dissipated. Elphaba had felt herself going mad in that castle, asfixiated by a guilt that gnawed at her bones. For a moment, the urge was to fall to her knees and let the tears wash her soul, but survival still demanded an iron mask. The rage that had been consuming her now transformed into a relief so deep it actually hurt.
He was alive. Her spell — that silent scream of magic born from purest despair — had worked. Her Fiyero was on his way.
Struggling to maintain her composure, her eyes burned with tears of a relief she never thought possible. With an almost imperceptible gesture, she confirmed to her messenger that she had understood the message. The last few hours had been an emotional massacre, a violent journey between ecstasy and absolute ruin. She had never felt so loved, knowing that Fiyero had sacrificed everything for her; but she had also never known a despair as great as believing she had been the instrument of his destruction. He had given his skin and his soul to save her. Elphaba would not accept destiny if it meant gaining freedom at the cost of losing her heart.
While flying to Kiamo Ko, cruel visions invaded her mind: his body being dragged, the blunt blows of the guards, the silence of one who surrenders for love. She had flown as if the sky itself were burning, escorted by shadows, concentrating every beat of her heart on that healing spell. Uncertainty, however, had been her greatest executioner. While chanting the forbidden incantations, the magic seemed to slip through her fingers, cold and indomable. She was no healer; she was a witch whose powers had always seemed destined to destroy, never to mend. The fear that her magic had only prolonged his agony — or worse, that it had transformed him into something unrecognizable — terrified her.
In her magical prayers, she saw his transformed face, surrounded by straw, but the image was a blur of pain. Each time the connection failed, an icy chill ran down her spine. Was that the silence of death? Seeing his suffering, feeling life fading away while she screamed words the universe seemed to ignore, had made her collapse on the cold floor. In the vacuum between the spell and the response, she felt herself dying with him. The weight of not knowing if her hands had saved the man she loved or sealed his cruel fate was the most refined torture she had ever experienced.
It had to have worked. He had to be alive.
Her mind repeated, like an open wound, the argument with Glinda and the way Fiyero had appeared, protecting her with a new fury. His gaze — hard, authoritative, yet overflowing with a silent promise — had ordered her to leave. She had obeyed with a bleeding chest, only so his sacrifice would not be in vain. Now, the fire of wrath gave way to the desperate urgency of touching him. She wanted to scream his name, but the world was still dangerous. Madame Morrible, the true villain over Oz, could never suspect that the man who had challenged her from within the system was about to return from the dead.
The revenge plan had finally become a promise of escape.
Elphaba knew the theater was her only protection. "We’ve seen your face for the last time," the words spoken to Glinda echoed with real pain. She lifted her chin, molding her face into the mask of the defeated villain. Deceiving Glinda was an act of cruel mercy; she recited every word with a slowness that cut her throat, watching the pain mirrored in her friend's eyes.
She still loved Glinda, with a painful nostalgia for simpler times, but the blonde's immaturity had cost lives. Her life and Fiyero's could have been destroyed by palace whims, and Glinda still did not comprehend the extent of the abyss she had helped dig—but one day she would.
The choice was made. Fiyero was her love, the only one who never hesitated to set the world against himself to keep her safe. If Glinda needed to be the hero of Oz, so be it. Elphaba would accept the burden of being the monster, the green-skinned villain everyone feared, as long as it bought the silence necessary for them to disappear.
She used Dorothy as an excuse, kept the necessary distance from Glinda, and staged her own end. Now, hidden within the castle, she waited for her future.
No one was safe in Oz, and they needed to become ghosts. Perhaps for a while, perhaps forever. The note indicated the destination: a place where magic was not a weapon, but simply part of life.
Elphaba was tired of being a symbol, tired of fighting alone. She needed his touch, the voice that calmed her, the certainty that she wasn't just a mistake of nature. She had been in the shadows for too long, fighting for a people that hated her.
The time had come to leave Oz behind. The time had come to, finally, breathe without fear. She no longer wanted power or justice; she only wanted the right to love and be loved in peace.