scandalaciousreputation
She knew who the footsteps belonged to before the painfully familiar face appeared at the tiny, barred window that sat around eye level in the impenetrably thick door. She recognised the tread from those long-ago days at Shiz, glancing up from her notes at the sound of hurried, purposeful footsteps as the young prince slipped into a classroom ten or twenty minutes after the lesson had begun and into the only vacant seat – the one beside her. From trying to keep pace with him as they rescued the lion cub, and watching him leave her standing under that bridge. From the train station that cursed day when she had first come to the Emerald City, shortly before a bouquet of poppies had been thrust into her hands.
More recently, of course, she had been filled with foolish hope at the sound of his approach through the thick darkness of the Great Gillikin Forest. She had been helping a family of Bears just outside of Traum, and when he found her she had (thankfully) moved away from where they were hiding and towards the Madeleines in search of somewhere to rest. She had not wanted to stay too close to them, despite their offer of a bed for the night. Her presence was a danger to them, she knew that all too well.
The hope had been foolish, she had realised, because he now wore the green-and-gold uniform of the Captain of the Guard. Foolish, because even then she had allowed herself another moment’s hope that he was there to help her, old alliances that had never been fully formed finally blossoming in her hour of need. But no. Elphaba had always known in her heart that fate and luck were not on her side. Seeing him look at her from behind the barrel of a gun had confirmed that more harshly than she had anticipated.
Southstairs was not a place to harbour hope, and so she had finally relinquished what little had remained during her days as a fugitive. It hadn’t taken long, in the end. They’d shut her up in one of the few cells that had four walls and a ceiling – a measure to prevent her escape, just as chaining her up had been. They were so scared of her, she had realised, and so certain that the Wicked Witch of the West was real and not merely a fabrication on the part of their spineless Wizard and his treacherous press secretary. The Grimmerie had been taken from her, as had her broomstick and her hat. Heavy, cold metal chains shackled both her wrists and ankles at one end and were attached to the walls at the other, making it impossible for her to do much more than kneel in the centre of the stone floor inside her windowless cell. She had been there for half a day, maybe, when their true aims had been revealed to her.
The soldier had opened the back of her dress with the kind of reverence she had always imagined a lover would, exposing the brilliant green of her skin to the cold air of the room he and another had dragged her to. There were no familiar faces among the five green-clad soldiers who were in there with her, a fact that she had been partly thankful for. There was only one light in the room, and the shadows it cast hid their faces from her sight – she doubted that this had not been well thought through; a preventative measure to stop her from identifying them and enacting her revenge if she had managed to defy the odds and break free. She was still chained around her wrists, but they had not bothered with her ankles in here – even she knew she wouldn’t be able to get away from them now.
Agony was not the word for it, though perhaps it was the only one that came close to describing the pain as the strikes caught the tops of her arms and the base of her neck as well as her back – the particular soldier who had been gifted the task of torturing the Wicked Witch, rather than standing by to make sure she didn’t try to escape, seemed to pay little heed to the accuracy of his blows. She had never known pain like it; she had never known that there could be pain like it. She forced herself to close her eyes, to remain silent. She would not give them the satisfaction of a reaction.
After a while, she couldn’t tell pain from a new blow from an old one. Her back felt as though it were on fire, and it took all she had to stop herself from instinctively darting away from the lash. If it caught her head it would likely kill her, and she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of that just yet, either. They went up and down her back, spreading the lashes out so that the skin could not break too quickly – so that they could do this again, should they need to. It was so rhythmic that she could barely catch her breath – the spasms of her body preventing her from inhaling between the blows. She’d heard stories about this, since she had gone underground, terrible tales of them all but killing traitors in an attempt to break them. They would strike her twenty times, and if she did not give in then she would be chained back up in her lonely cell until they saw fit to try again.
She wondered if that was why he was coming to her now, to see if he would have more luck than those he commanded.
Hunger gnawed at her insides, and thirst clawed at her throat. She could feel her temperature fluctuating in increments as she knelt, immobile and chained, on the cold, stone floor. The wounds would be infected soon, surely – it was obvious that they didn’t care how they got her to break, just so long as she did. If torture did not work, then they would allow her own body to rebel against her until pain and fever broke her in ways that they could not. Her body was weakened, but her resolve was still strong. This was not about her.
Pale eyes glared daggers at him as soon as he was in her line of sight. Prince Fiyero of the Arjikis; the woefully uncaring student she had met at Shiz was now the newly sworn in Captain of the Guard, and would be credited as being the one who had successfully captured the Wicked Witch of the West. What a difference a few years could make.
“Come to finish your fine work, Captain?” She spat the words out at him with more venom than a woman in her state should have been capable of. She tried to force herself to kneel as upright as she could manage despite the pain that cut through her body at the attempt, unwilling to appear weak even now. “I will admit that I was wondering if you would show your face again, or if you would leave the dirty work to those who sat a little beneath you in the ranks. As I’m sure you can see, your men have done a decent job in your stead.”