A/N: This has been cooking for quite a while, ladies and gents. I was originally considering making it a direct sequel to "The Shattering of Oz," but I dropped that when I took a closer look at the concept, and realized that playing it with Elphaba and Glinda as they were at the end of the story wouldn't work: it felt like character regression, and it wouldn't have made sense considering all they'd seen and done by that stage. Repeating the formula of Elphaba trying to hide her survival from Glinda seemed equally unlikely to work: quite apart from the irritations particular to rehashing exactly the same old shit, it would have felt like another step backwards in characterization. So, I went for an AU that diverges only slightly from the events of the musical- as you'll soon discover- and allow the characters to develop a little differently than before.

As for what inspired this story, there have been a lot of things that gave me ideas in the last couple of months, but the first and most amusing of them would have to be my thoughts on viewing the trailer to Oz: The Great and The Powerful- specifically upon realizing that the Emerald City appeared to be already built by the time of the Wizard's arrival: "The only way they can possibly have this make any sense is by having it take place in a parallell universe." (As for what I thought of the film itself, I didn't find it nearly as enraging as I thought I would: though most of it's a bit of a drag in regards to plot and character motivations, and the token Flying Monkey is a pain in the arse from beginning to end, there were a few scenes that actually carried emotional weight, and I appreciate the fact that the writer/director at least tried to give the future Wicked Witch of the West a sympathetic background and an understandable motivation. The key word being "tried.")

So, without further ado, my latest story: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wicked is not mine; I have this on good authority.

Had anyone with a gift for magic taken a good look at the castle of Kiamo Ko from the outside, they would have been deeply worried.

Invisible to the naked eye but horrifyingly real nonetheless, the fabric of reality itself was beginning to fray and tear; from the outer wall to the distant outskirts of the property, the castle was surrounded by ethereal rifts- some large, some small, but all of them were growing at a terrifying rate. On their own, these wounds were harmless for the most part: the flying monkeys passed through them without noticing anything out of the ordinary, and one inquisitive traveller had actually set up camp right on top of one with no ill effects apart from a few weird dreams.

But the rips were growing, edging closer and closer towards the centre of the castle, and if they were to converge, there'd be no telling what could happen next. After all, infinity itself was bubbling and broiling behind the spectral wounds; the possibilities were quite literally unlimited.

Of course, given that the number of trained magicians in the region could be counted on one hand, and Elphaba Thropp and Glinda Uppland were both inside the castle and not interested in taking a good look outdoors, there was only one person who could have possibly seen the disaster lurching towards them: she was watching it through an observatory telescope, too far away to make any kind of difference.

And for the first time in what felt like decades, Madame Morrible felt true fear- for herself, for the world, and, quite unexpectedly, for her students.

She didn't know what had made these wounds in the first place, but she could easily guess what had caused them to grow so dramatically; after all, the results of Elphaba's last temper-tantrum had been visible from the Emerald City- was it any wonder that her deteriorating sanity was actually tearing the world apart? Thanks to the death of her sister and Fiyero, combined with her numerous failed attempts to seize the Ruby Slippers, the girl was obviously a hair's breadth from madness- and in danger of taking reality in the same direction.

And she also knew something even more troubling: It wasn't a question of if this convergence of rifts would happen or not anymore; it was a question of when.

Morrible could only pray - somewhat uncharacteristically - that Glinda might be able to calm the former star pupil down before it was too late.

"For the last time, she stole the slippers!" Elphaba shouted, briefly drowning out Dorothy's near-constant sobbing for a moment or two.

Glinda, who'd been trying to negotiate as best she could, flinched at the jagged edge to Elphaba's voice. She'd arrived at the castle less than five minutes ago, floating awkwardly across the skies of Oz in a desperate attempt to reach Kiamo Ko before the witch-hunters did; and along the way, in between almost puncturing the bubble, crashing, and being seen by scouts from the witch-hunter army, she'd wondered if she'd ever be able to get through to her friend- what with the way things had fallen apart over the last few days. Now that she was here, practically tripping over flying monkeys and struggling to make herself heard over the wailing of Elphaba's hostage, things weren't looking any better. In fact, if anything, they looked a thousand times worse than ever before.

"There is no dressing this up as anything other than grave-robbery," the tirade continued. "That..." She paused, struggling to find an epithet she hadn't used before. "That cacophonic little brat," she decided at last, "stole the-"

"They're only shoes, Elphaba, you don't actually need them-"

Elphaba's left eyelid twitched dangerously. "They're the only thing I've got left of Nessa!" she screamed. "And you want me to just let the girl stroll away with them as if they belonged to her?! No; for the fifth time, NO. If you really want to help her-"

"Oh for Oz's sake, I came here to help you!"

"You have a very funny way of showing it."

"Oh would you just shut up and listen?!" Glinda shrilled, her face flushing with anger. "There's an army out there, Elphie, and it's marching on Kiamo Ko; they'll be here soon, and they're not just going to try and break Dorothy out of the cellar- they're going to kill you. You need to get your prioritivities in order. You can outrun them easily if you get on your broom and start flying right now, but you're going to have let Dorothy go-"

"-And let her keep the Ruby Slippers-"

"They aren't worth dying over, Elphie!"

"How in the hell are you any judge of that, exactly? I mean, are you trying to grow a brain under those blonde tresses, or did the Wizard just give you a cue card to read or something when he sent you here?"

Elphaba couldn't have done more damage if she'd reached over and slapped her across the face. For perhaps three whole seconds, Glinda could only gape in disbelief, her face frozen in a look of utter shock. Then, she shouted "What is wrong with you?! You aren't just angry, you're going crazy-"

"Come on, let's hear it all! What do you want to call me next? Abomination? Freak? Wicked Witch? Traitor? Corruptor? Murderess? I've heard them all, Glinda, all of them from your good friend the Wizard. Try me- what do want to call me? What do you think I am?"

"You're out of control!" Glinda screamed.

There was a long silence, as both witches took a very deep breath and pondered what to say next.

From that point onwards, things should have proceeded very simply: moments after that exchange of insults, Elphaba would have received the letter from Fiyero- notifying her that he was alive and well- and decided that it was time to leave Oz once and for all; she and Glinda would have forgiven each other for their past mistakes, reaffirmed their friendship one last time, and then exchanged tearful farewells; then, before the stunned eyes of the witnesses that had gathered around her, Elphaba would have faked her death.

In over a thousand different parallel timelines, the same sequence had played out in exactly the same way. The results weren't always the same, of course: in many versions of the story, Glinda found the green bottle and used it to bring a swift and unexpected end to the Wizard's regime; in others, she simply took the place of her "dead" friend and started a revolution. Sometimes, Elphaba and Fiyero escaped and spent the rest of their lives in peaceful seclusion without their ruse ever being discovered, and at other times, Glinda found herself receiving an unexpected visit from the deceased couple later that evening. On occasion, for one reason or another, events spiralled into chaos and destruction, with all three friends dying in the ensuing warfare.

In this timeline, any one of those innumerable possibilities could have come to pass; in dozens of them, the fabric of reality might have been able to heal without Elphaba's grief-fuelled involuntary magic tearing any further holes in it.

But something in the sequence had changed.

It was a simple issue of bad timing: far outside the castle walls, Fiyero had slipped away from the Tin Man and the Lion, and was now trying to get the attention of the flying monkeys that now soared above Kiamo Ko in the hope that one of them might able to deliver the letter he'd written; in countless other timelines, Chistery had been flying close enough to see him and descended to investigate. At the Scarecrow's request, he'd delivered the letter to Elphaba, and things had progressed accordingly.

In this timeline, though, Chistery had taken a different flight path around the castle and hadn't seen Fiyero.

In this timeline, the letter did not reach Elphaba.

Glinda was the first to break the silence. "Elphie," she said- and there was no disguising the sheer desperation in her voice now-, "The Slippers can't be the only thing you can remember Nessarose by, can they? I mean, there was that wheelchair-"

"So I can recall just how much she hated the damn thing? Or how long I left her alone with it before finally bothering to help her? No, Glinda, I don't want to remember Nessa that way." She sighed deeply. "Before I enchanted them, the slippers were a gift from father- silver-plated shoes to celebrate getting into Shiz, and she loved them. I remember how she wore them to the Ozdust ballroom, when she danced with Boq..." In spite of herself, she smiled, briefly lost in nostalgia. "Do you remember how happy she was in those days?"

Glinda nodded.

"That's how I want to remember her: happy; safe; loved... and I want to remember a time when I didn't shirk my duties to her." The smile faded. "Enchanting the Slippers was the last good thing I ever did for her- the first in years after I abandoned her."

"What are you talking about? You didn't –"

"Yes I did! I was supposed to care for Nessa, I was supposed to make sure she didn't get hurt; so what did I do? I left her alone while I went off to fight for Animal Rights, and saddled her with every single bit of bad press I got. I've seen the newspapers, Glinda: they were suspecting her of being like me even before she started passing laws against the Munchkins! And worst of all, I failed the very thing I abandoned her for: the Wizard is still in charge, the Animals still have no rights to speak of, and there's no chance of anything changing for the better! My sister is dead and it all happened because of me!" She fell silent, her eyes shining with tears.

"You can't keep blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong, Elphie. Nothing that happened to Nessa was your fault. I mean, the house didn't land on her because you left her, that was an acc-" Glinda stopped, briefly remembering the triumphant leer on Morrible's face, and the threats that had followed; she couldn't go on pretending that it had been an accident, not after that. "It wasn't your fault," she finished. "And having the Slippers won't change what happened either."

"That's not the point. I need to remember that I was there for her once. I need to remember that I helped someone."

"You've helped lots of people- you've helped the Animals, you've helped me, you've helped Fiyero-"

Elphaba's face twisted in anguish; without warning, she was crying, tears coursing down her face. "And look what good that did!" she sobbed. "My help was probably what killed him in the end!"

For a moment or two, Glinda couldn't respond. Already taken aback by the incongruous sight of Elphaba crying (something she'd never done in all the years Glinda had known her), she was almost completely silenced by the terrible words that had just been voiced. Eventually, she managed to piece her thoughts together long enough to ask, "What?"

"He's dead, Glinda, and it's because of me!" She took a deep breath, clearly trying to steady herself. "I tried to help him when he was being tortured, I tried; as soon as I stopped running, I used every spell in the Grimmerie that looked as if it could help. It was working- I could feel the magic reaching towards him- and then it all fell apart: one minute he was there, the next he was gone."

"But that doesn't mean he's dead," Glinda exclaimed, desperately seizing at the few vague strands of hope within reach. "Maybe he escaped and he's still alive somewhere-"

"Then why hasn't he shown himself? Why haven't we heard from him since then? Even if the guards decided to imprison him instead of torture him to death, we would have heard something about it." Elphaba sighed deeply; the grief in her voice was fading, replaced by a kind of weary, despairing resignation. "No, Glinda; Fiyero's dead. Either he died under torture... or I botched the spell and it killed him. And that's the most damning thing about it: I could have saved him- I know I could have if I'd been quicker, if I'd been able to concentrate on the words of the spell... and instead I let him slip through my fingers."

In any ordinary situation, this would have been Glinda's cue to burst into tears. And why wouldn't she? She was still fresh from learning that she'd been party to Nessa's assassination; her best friend was teetering on the brink of madness and facing certain death at the hands of an angry mob; and now she'd learned that her fiancé (former fiancé, she remembered with a fresh thrill of pain) was dead. By all rights, she should have been slumped against the wall, crying like a baby from the moment she'd heard the news. But she didn't- she couldn't: the avalanche of bad news had virtually numbed her to all emotion.

She could only stand there, wondering if there was a chance that she might wake up soon, that she'd be back at Shiz, that Nessa and Fiyero would still be alive, and that Elphaba's hopes would still be intact.

For perhaps five minutes, near-total silence flourished in the hall; even Dorothy's sobbing had petered out during the last few seconds of debate, leaving the castle quieter than a tomb- except perhaps for the sound of the wind billowing through an open window and howling along a distant corridor. Had either of them realised that most of the windows were shut and the air outside was deathly still, they might have found the noise a bit curious, even troubling; but grief had virtually deafened them to the sounds of the outside world.

Eventually, Glinda finally found her voice again, and numbly asked, "Do you ever wonder if things could have been better?"

"All the time."

Morrible's face once again flickered in and out of Glinda's head, and one of her harsher rebukes stung her pride again: "You were always going to end up working for us, my dear; this is the only career you'd have ever found, and it's the only lifestyle you'd have taken up. Don't get ideas above your station: you just keep smiling for that audience down there and shut up about Elphaba. It's bad enough that she discarded the Wizard's offer; it's even worse when I've got you wafting around the palace, reminding me that we had to settle for less-than-second best."

Out loud, Glinda asked, "Do you think we'd have ended up like this no matter what we'd done?"

"Of course not," said Elphaba simply. "Things could have been different if I'd made the right decisions- if I'd cast the spell quicker, if I'd stayed with Nessa, if I'd accepted the Wizard's offer, if I'd been more careful... if I'd been stronger..." She hung her head for a moment, and somewhere in the distance, the howl of the wind intensified. "But what's done is done; there's no way of knowing what the world would be like if we'd made the right decisions- and not much point, either. It's too late."

"What do you mean?"

"There's not much more I can mean by that, Glinda; it's too late- for me. For everything I wanted to accomplish." She reached into her robe, and held out a small brass key. "That's for the cellar door, if you're still interested in saving the girl; it's not as if there's much point in keeping her locked away anymore. Just..." A myriad of emotions briefly warred for dominance of Elphaba's face; sadness won. "Just try and get her to bury the Ruby Slippers with Nessa. That's all I ask."

"But why can't you do that yourself? I can probably talk Dorothy into giving up the shoes, and you can-"

"The witchhunters are going to be here soon."

"I know that well enough, thanks, and that's why you've got to be out of here befo-"

Her eyes widened, as the implications of Elphaba's seemingly offhand remark sank in. "You can't be serious," she said quietly.

"I've never been more serious in my entire life."

"But... but... you don't have to do that; you can fly away, you can hide somewhere, you..." Glinda floundered for a moment. "You can't just give up and let them kill you!" she exploded.

"I'm getting very tired of running, Glinda; I'm tired of fighting battles that I'll never be able to win, and I'm fed up with preaching truths that nobody wants to hear. And besides, even if I did escape, they'd still catch up with me eventually; now that the Wizard's whipped the entire country into a witch-hunt, I doubt there'll be many places to hide." She smiled mirthlessly. "Maybe this way, I'll finally surprise them for a change: if they were to find me sitting in an armchair, reading a book, maybe sipping a glass of wine, how long do you think they'd wait before they finally plucked up the courage to charge in? Imagine how disappointed they'll be that the Wicked Witch of the West didn't give them a final showdown before dying."

A corridor or so away, the wind moan and howled loud enough to be heard even over the conversation; had either of them been in the mood to notice it, the two might have felt the world around them warp and twist ever-so-slightly.

Outside, the tears in reality were less than a foot away from converging.

"Elphaba, listen to me for just a minute," Glinda pleaded, oblivious to the madness encroaching on the castle. "You don't have to do this. I know places in the Emerald City where nobody will ever think to look for you- secret passages, safe-houses, disusified cellars- I can get you to any one of them without anyone ever finding out."

"And what if someone does find out? You'll end up just like Nessa; they'll paint you as an accomplice from beginning to end and then they'll have you executed. Its better this way, you have to see that-"

"No!" Glinda screamed, her smothered emotions finally exploding outwards. "I'm not going to leave you to die-"

"And I'm not going to let you ruin your life trying to protect me!" Elphaba screamed back, now having to raise her voice above the whistling of the wind. "I am not going to let another friend die because of me!"

A long and unpleasant silence followed; for twelve whole seconds, the two witches stood, locked in an impasse, each of them trying to will the other into giving in and accepting what they saw as the only sane option- neither of them having much success. And then, just as it seemed that one of them might give in, a tiny, almost inaudible sound split the air; to Elphaba, it sounded worryingly like dry cloth bursting into flame.

Whoosh.

As one, the two of them turned in the direction of the noise-

-just in time to see the very centre of the room engulfed in vivid white light, a field of incandescent energies blossoming outwards from thin air, accompanied by a deafening roar of gale-force wind. As they watched, the light expanded dramatically: sprouting upwards at an incredible speed, it tore into the ceiling violently enough to shake the entire castle to its very foundations.

Cringing away from the blinding glow and struggling to stay upright, the two of them tried to retreat to the door, but without much success: whatever this light was, it had some kind of whirlpool-like gravity to it; no matter how far or how hard Glinda or Elphaba ran from it, they kept sliding back to their original positions- and ever-so-slightly closer to the growing field of light. The only thing they could do was stagger over to the mantlepiece and hang on for dear life as chairs, tables, bookshelves and every other bit of loose furniture went tumbling towards it. And as soon as an object slid beneath the glare of the light, it simply vanished.

"What the hell is it?!" Glinda shouted over the roar of the wind.

"Your guess is as good as mine!" Elphaba replied.

Another tremor rippled through the ground beneath their feet, strong enough to send cracks racing across the floor, walls, and ceiling; dust rained down from the fracturing roof, accompanied by pebble-sized chunks of masonry- and one large enough to smash a passing vanity to splinters. The mural window at the centre of the room cracked, groaned and finally shattered into a blizzard of glass shards that immediately flew towards the light- missing Elphaba by inches.

"Is there any way you can reach your broom from here?" Glinda howled.

"Not anymore, I don't think! It just went past us! Is there any way you can summon the bubble from here?"

"It's not working!"

There was a loud screech from overhead, and something winged and furry alighted on a distant beam - just outside the light's devastating gravitation.

"Chistery!" Elphaba shouted. "Get out of here- now!"

The flying monkey hooted in disagreement.

"For Oz's sake, this is no time to be a hero! You can't save us; just get the other monkeys-"

"And Dorothy!" Glinda added helpfully, trying to ignore the sound of the walls giving way.

"-out of the castle!"

Chistery gripped the edge of the beam very hard, eyes visibly flicking between Elphaba and the open window that he'd just flown through. Finally he shouted an order through the window, and from outside, there was a barely-audible sound of flapping wings as the flying monkeys reluctantly departed. Then, just as Glinda was sighing in relief at the fact that Elphaba wouldn't have to see another friend die, Chistery turned back towards them and leapt from the beam with a daredevil screech of exhilaration.

In that moment, time stopped; Glinda swore that the entire universe ground to a halt just to let the insanity of that next second play out before her eyes: Chistery soaring towards them, only just managing to escape the effects of the light; Elphaba screaming in horror and frustration, one arm outstretched and shrouded with green light as if she was about to cast a spell; the walls cracking and buckling, a shower of rubble cascading from the roof; the impossible light at the centre of the room flaring wildly; the mantle was beginning to tear away from the wall...

Then, time was in motion again:

Quite unexpectedly, the mantle didn't tear away from the wall. Instead, the entire wall disintegrated into rubble and went hurtling across the room towards the light, taking Elphaba and Glinda with it. To his credit, Chistery managed to avoid being crushed by the hail of bricks or lacerated by flying glass shards, and arrived almost exactly in front of the people he'd intended to rescue; unfortunately, trying to contend with the weight of two full-grown human beings and the inexplicable gravity turned out to be a bit beyond the flying monkey, and he too was sent tumbling towards the light.

In the few seconds before all three of them struck the light, Glinda looked up in terror at the thing they were about to be swallowed by... and then, as if they were passing through a curtain, the light itself appeared to part around them. But instead of the other side of the room, she found herself staring out at a horizon of vivid colours and impossible, ever-changing shapes- as if they were somehow travelling past the lens of the largest kaleidoscope ever built.

And then, as she was gazing out at the spectacle unfolding before her with a sense of childlike wonder she hadn't felt since she'd first seen the Emerald City, something heavy slammed into the back of her head, knocking her senseless.

The "something" turned out to be none other than Dorothy Gale; having been unexpectedly sprung from prison by the collapse of the ceiling, she'd wasted no time in running for the exit as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, on her way out, she'd ended up being swept up by the expanding gravity of the light and sent tumbling into the multicoloured skyscape, bouncing off Glinda's head as she soared past them.

As such, the last thing Glinda heard before she blacked out was a familiar voice screaming "Not this agaaaaaiiiiiinnn!"

Fiyero could tell that something was wrong from the moment he'd seen the Flying Monkeys hurrying away from the castle; after all, unless they'd been sent out on another mass assault of some kind, they wouldn't have had much reason to leave Kiamo Ko- not with their ironclad loyalty to Elphaba.

But it wasn't until he saw the battlements crumbling inwards that he realized the extent of the problem. Now, light was pouring from every single remaining window in the castle, the walls were slowly crumbling into rubble, and the tower was undergoing a slow but inevitable descent towards the light-obscured compound below. And all of this was secondary to the one fact that had actually kidnapped Fiyero's brain: Elphaba was still in the building.

Hissing an expletive, he put his head down and ran as fast as he could towards the collapsed gate of the castle. He wasn't sure what he was going to do once he got inside; after all, he had no idea what had started the collapse, what was producing the light, or if he'd be able to survive approaching it- even in his current condition. Truth be told, he didn't much care: all that mattered was making sure Elphaba was safe.

And somewhere in the dust cloud the Scarecrow had left in his wake, the Tin Man, the Lion and Toto took to their heels and charged after him.