_{‘ I’ve told you, I will be FINE, just… leave me now… please. ‘}

  _{Her voice is no longer loud, no longer angry. it’s blank & bare, though her lips are facing the opposite direction from the fairy’s voice, she won’t LOOK at her, because she isn’t wrong, elphaba just didn’t need such a reminder. she needed the solitude, she ( deserved ) it. she didn’t need worry from those with LIGHGT inside them. & she didn’t want it.} 

                                            _{‘ I  mean it, tinkerbell. just GO. ‘}

                   _{‘ I’M  fine! ‘ – it’s said out of INSTINCT. the sharpness of her tone is to assert that she did not need coddling, nor did she need the contrast of gentle touch. hands had STUNG against her skin since her birthing day, words had slapped across her face, nails dug into her skin. but she had bled, and she had healed. it took far more to break her. it was in her defiance that she still stood. she needed not such questions from naive children. ———————————————————————————–  ‘ JUST  go. ‘}

          _{I DON’T.  it’s her first though. a brother, the son her father so DESIRED, the male heir to the family. the only one with no ( defects ). and yet, besides is sex, he was an utter FAILURE of a man. and he had always been the most loved, even though it was during ( his ) birth their mother had died. somehow, it could still be put on HER head. family scapegoat ;; she had always been it.} 

          _{SILENTLY,  her fingernails dig into her calloused palms, she relishes in the sting, how it RELIEVES her mind. her eyes have yet to meet his. it’d been ( years ) since she’d last seen shell, and she didn’t wish to again. as if her family would allow her near them anyhow. he was surely content raping his prison maidens without his dear SISTER to be concerned with.}

                                                                _{‘ I DON’T  wish to speak about it. ‘}

                 _{WHAT WAS  she afraid of? everything now. she’d spent most of life running from fear & ( weakness ). but now ——————— she’s lost all the CONTROL she’d fought for, she wasn’t herself now, head spinning, lights of the city blurring. ( WICKED WITCH ). she was forever labeled, forever DAMNED. what was she afraid of?} 

           _{———————————————————————  HERSELF.}

           _{IT WAS an ever-present pounding in her head. whispers of morality, of a soul or lack of it. what was RIGHT seemed to slip through her fingers. she attracted catastrophe like adhesive. the only thing she’d come to learn in seclusion, is there was no right or wrong. there was only grays, a million shades of them. the ugliest truths of life, those which hit you hardest of all. and she had faced them alone.}

       _{HER HEART  beats wildly. it’s INSTANTLY a guilt in her throat, for rapunzel to take such a ( risk ) for her. she wasn’t WORTH it, the danger, the fleeing. her life would never be one of glamour. she wasn’t made for such things. she destroyed them with her bare hands.}

        _{THOSE HANDS,  cold & calloused take the smooth ones into her own. she knows she cannot stop the strength of the blonde’s will, but she could also never ( forgive ) herself if rapunzel was hurt.}  

                                    _{‘ IT WILL  not be safe. you must understand that. ‘}

                  ‘ RAPUNZEL you have to go –––––––––––––––––– now. ‘

         everything  had  changed.  she had barely noticed the blonde when she
         showed up behind her,   her face now hidden below the cover of a  thin
         and   grimy  black   shawl.         the   siren  screams  of  the  gale   force
         ( e c h o e d ) through the alley walls, rippling her skin. and yet rapunzel
         was STILL seemingly unafraid.      she,  it seemed,   was destined to be
         thousands  of times stronger than elphaba ever would  be,    but it was
         not   a    LUXURY      she    now    had,       to   admit    such     a  thing.

                 ‘ I –––––––– I’M SORRY, but you have to just… leave before
                  someone sees you with me. you never even knew my NAME. ‘

    SHE HAD heard it seldom in her lifetime. once, maybe twice. she
     had been raised to know her place,  taught that she has LITTLE by
     the way of value ( however much she fought such a notion ).  while
     she had vowed to prove her worth,   she could not erase what she
     was innately. there was no definition of beauty under which she fit. 

     perhaps it would’ve been softening to her, once. but now, after her
     skin  had   ( c a l l o u s e d )   and worn,   it nothing short of some
     insult from the back of his hand,  a blow she withstood every day.
     nothing  more than a paper  cut,    yet  nothing less than a  bruise.

                        ‘ DO NOT  make a  mockery  of me.     I  didn’t address  you
                          nor belittle you. I simply passed, and will do so, without fuss. ‘