Tried to upload this yesterday but my stupid internet broke down literally as I was uploading the document.

It's been too long. Last time I uploaded something the last HP film hadn't come out (I thought it was awesome, btw what did everyone else think?) and I hadn't stayed up half the night in order to be one of the first to access pottermore only to find out that was not how to do it (still I've registered now so life is good). Why does growing up make your life so busy?

Anyway, this is set sometime post No Good Deed, assuming there's a good few months between NGD and Dorothy.

Betaed by the ever lovely (mostly) crazybeagle, who said she kinda wants to write a continuation to this so I say we nag her until she does because a) she really needs to get back into the Wicked section and b) having a fanfic written about your fanfic, how cool is that!

This couldn't be happening. She was unnatural, a freak, a disaster, a curse. Just when she thought she had nothing left to lose – nowhere lower to sink – this, something she had doubted was even possible, had happened.

But there was no use denying it. She had been doing so for weeks but it was getting clearer by the day. The hunger was not just because she was starving herself. The sickness was not just at the thought of what she had done to all those she cared for. The tiredness was not just because whenever she closed her eyes she could see his broken form. And she was not late because of the strain of continuously fleeing for her life coupled with her utter devastation.

She had never been one to hide the truth from herself for long. She knew Oz hated her. She knew anything she had tried to achieve in her life had only resulted in making it worse. She knew her lover lay dead because of her. She knew in a matter of months, weeks even, she would be hunted down and killed too. She knew the world for her was never meant to be a good place.

And she knew she was going to bring another life into this unendurable world.

She couldn't do this. She was hurting the child already. And she'd destroyed the lives of everyone she'd ever loved.

Her mother, her first victim, she'd killed her before her second birthday. Her father; dead. The shame of having such a freak driving him to suicide. Her sister, Nessa, oh dear Nessa, cursed from birth for the simple crime of having been born with the fear of looking like her sister hanging over. Dead. Dead because her sister had abandoned her, in a moment of fury, when she had most needed her. And Fiyero, wonderful, beautiful, kind, Fiyero. He had loved her despite all odds and had paid the price for it.

She'd killed every member of this child's family, what would stop her doing exactly the same to it?

How had she let this happen? How had she possibly have been so careless?

She knew how, of course. Joy, the stupid emotion that it is, had blinded her. She'd somehow fooled herself into believing that one moment of happiness would be worth anything that came after it. But then that moment had passed and here she was, the consequences of that moment enveloping her, and now, even growing inside her.

She didn't know she could fall so low, yet she was still spiralling further and further downward, out of control. Her life was out of control. She desperately clung to the one thing she could control, and clawing at the shattered remains of her life, she would prevent the painful, cursed and ultimately useless life of one being. She'd do what she wished her mother had done 23 years ago. What would have been better for everyone.

Furiously, unthinking she grabbed the Grimmerie, still lying where she had dropped it the previous night when she had crumpled to the floor with fatigue, during her constant, desperate and pointless search for a way to cure Fiyero. She flicked furiously through the pages finally finding a potion she had never thought she'd have any use for.

Determination driving her on much more than any sanity she still clung to, she grabbed handfuls of ingredients and flung them into her cauldron, thanking Oz that there was still one potion that could save her.

In a matter of hours it was ready. A small bottle that would painlessly remove all traces of this cursed parasite inside her. The foul, destructive, liquid, bubbled as if anticipating a kill. One gulp and she'd have one fewer trouble to haunt her every moment. And it, it would never have to experience the pain that she lived with constantly. She brought the bottle to her mouth, hand shaking. One drink and it would all be over.

Images flashed before her, running as fast as her little legs could carry her, pushing the chair, Nessa giggling. The Lion Cub, terrified, trembling as that evil Professor hit the cage, some desperate instinct inside her rushing to save it. Fiyero, Fiyero, smiling, holding her, looking at her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered…

She threw the bottle to the floor. She watched the liquid soak through the stone floorboards. Fiyero already had been murdered because of her and she was too selfish to let go of the one part of him that lived on.