"Fabala, stay with me. Think of what we could do, together," Nessa said as she gestured, with her head, to the world beyond the glass window of her office. Elphaba looked out and saw a road of bright yellow brick, dotted with green grass and flowers of every color. She saw Munchkins going about their business as usual. The clouds flew lazily overhead. The wind occasionally ruffled the leaves on the trees. The sun shone. And there was discontent and tension on every face. Anger, misery, worry, anticipation. It was like everyone was poised before a great abyss and whether they would jump, fall or fly had not yet been determined.

"You know that positions and titles such as this were never my thing," Elphaba replied.

"Perhaps not," Nessa agreed. "But times and people change." Elphaba shook her head dryly at this, wishing only that Nessa could understand just how much those words had already applied to Elphaba. But instead of dwelling on that, she turned back to other matters.

"You seem to be doing just fine without me," she said, though her voice was not without sarcasm.

"I suppose. In some sense," Nessa replied, tone so unreadable that Elphaba could not tell if she was being serious, or equally sarcastic. "I have had my successes… But it still is not complete. The work is never done and I could use someone like you to help out."

"Someone who can repulse others into submission just by looks alone?" Elphaba asked with the barest of smirks.

"Yes," Nessa replied simply. "And I need someone who knows how to run a country and is willing to face any tasks such a job would entail."

"But Nessie, you know I've never been trained in-" Elphaba began.

"Nor have I, remember," Nessa interrupted. "Besides, I know you've been off in the Vinkus. Father told me that you mentioned it to him. I won't ask what you were doing there. I do not really care to know and I will not stick my nose in your business. I will, however, allow myself to understand that you weren't just living off the land."

Nessa's implications hung in the air thicker and darker than smoke and Elphaba looked uncomfortably close to choking.

"Perhaps I did manage to set up shop somewhere nicer than we grew up," she replied vaguely. "But I still have no interest in helping you run Munchkinland, especially not if you insist upon keeping it the way it is."

"What can I say, my dear?" Nessa asked, tilting her head with a mocking smile. Her eyes were like ice shards. "Times are hard and sacrifices must be made. It's not easy keeping a country in line, especially when it has freshly seceded from its main government… Besides, although I still do not know too much about it, Glinda told me that you ran away because you wished to defy the Wizard."

"Glinda!" Elphaba gasped, without even meaning to. "How is she?"

"Ah, as interested as ever," Nessa replied, but the way she looked at Elphaba made Elphaba realize that this answer was not speaking about Glinda, it was speaking about Elphaba. Elphaba looked away furiously.

"I have not seen her since our days at dear old Shiz," she growled.

"I am well aware," Nessa replied, smirk vanishing from her face so that now only the ice and bitterness remained. "When you left her, you didn't just abandon her. You abandoned me as well. You abandoned all of us!"

"I am sure you got along just fine without me," Elphaba grunted, some of her anger turning into guilt, but she still would not look back at Nessa.

"Only after much grieving," Nessa replied with a haughty sniff. "Glinda became a God-send. It was she who enchanted these shoes, you know?"

"Did she now?" Elphaba finally turned back to Nessa, not to look at her, but to look at the shoes.

"Yes. She said that I gave her the power to feel, so she would give me the power to walk," Nessa replied, sounding almost like she was bragging.

"How poetic," Elphaba deadpanned, scowling at the shoes.

Nessa did not reply to this, instead thinking back to Glinda. Although the two saw one another very rarely (and this lack of visitation would surely increase now that Nessa had seceded Munchkinland away from the rest of Oz), Nessa still held an old fondness for the silly, batty little blond. Although she always seemed like one with her head in the clouds, it was clear that she could be very genuine at times. It was a trait both Thropp sisters admired in her. Yet it was always clear to Nessa that Glinda's heart had belonged to only one of the Thropp sisters, and it was not her. So when Elphaba abandoned them all, Glinda had come home in tears and gone to Nessa almost immediately, partially because she felt a duty to tell Nessa about Elphaba's flight, and partially because she wished to be with Elphaba again and Nessa was the closest thing Glinda had.

Back then, Nessa had felt somewhat annoyed by this, to think she was living in Elphaba's shadow and acting only as a replacement for Glinda, but Nessa had felt some level of fondness and attachment for her sister, even if it wasn't totally healthy, and Elphaba's abandonment had shaken her as well. She soon found herself reaching out to Glinda for the same reasons Glinda had reached out to her and the two became mutually bonded in their suffering, and in the love they used to have for Elphaba Thropp.

But as the years passed, the two drifted apart. With one heading for the Emerald City, the other returned to her birthland to claim her birthright, and she had been there ever since. As she had said, Glinda did come to visit a few times, enchanting the shoes on one of those occasions as a symbol of their old friendship, but the visits were rare. But because a tiny part of Nessa was still mad at Elphaba for abandoning them all, she tried to play up Glinda's visits. She tried to flaunt them in front of Elphaba to make her angry, envious and maybe even apologetic.

Although Nessa did genuinely like Glinda (eccentric though she was), whenever Elphaba was in the picture, Nessa liked to use her friendship with Glinda as a weapon. She liked to brag about it as if it were a trophy, another victory she had over Elphaba, caring for Glinda when the green witch decided to jump ship and go into hiding. She hoped that Elphaba would see Nessa's friendship with Glinda and feel as if she had been replaced, erased right out of the story. It was, in Nessa's mind, a suitable punishment because of how easily Elphaba had erased her and the rest of the Charmed Circle from her own saga.

But Nessa's words evoked no reaction from Elphaba. This did surprise Nessa to some degree, for she had known just as well as anyone how devoted Elphaba was to Glinda, but she figured that it was merely Elphaba being stubborn about her feelings again. That was far from new.

"You are right," the Witch of the East decided finally. "Let us look not to the past, but to the future. Let us put silly little Glinda out of our heads and talk about us instead," she continued. Elphaba, meanwhile, agreed, if only to escape the topic of Glinda. The truth was, Elphaba was a little jealous of the time Glinda and Nessa got to share. The only reason Nessa's words had failed to get a reaction from Elphaba was because Elphaba had already thought those very same things many times over. Similarly, she supposed, if she were to want Nessa to wind up in anyone else's care, she would want it to be in Glinda's, and vice versa.

"You are going to ask me to stay again. Help you with this little revolution?" Elphaba asked, taking Nessa's cue.

"You have no love for the Wizard," Nessa replied.

"I have no love for this land either. Especially not with the way it treats its Animals," the green witch replied, growing on the second sentence.

"Bah! We can free the Animals later. For now, we have to focus on protecting this new land," Nessa replied dismissively, but Elphaba only shook her head coldly. It was a dangerous thing to assume that an oppressed people could wait, because what happened when "later" never came?

"We cannot afford to wait with the Animals," Elphaba said. "Their liberation must be on the agenda as well."

"Well, I suppose I can try to squeeze it in," Nessa mused, leaning over her desk to study her planner. Elphaba heaved a sigh. She knew Nessa was trying to be funny, but underneath the satirical and dry wit, there was something truly tragic about the entire thing. Nessa truly had no idea what she was doing. Oh, she knew well enough to secede Munchkinland from Oz, which was no small feat, but she did not seem to understand the true significance of the act, or the importance of it. Sure, she knew that she would soon be facing the Wizard's wrath and she definitely needed help planning for that, but the concept of true liberation seemed lost upon her.

What had driven her to secede Munchkinland? Clearly it was not pity upon the Animals. Or even the people! Had she not, just yesterday, enchanted an axe to chop off the limbs of the unlucky man named Nick Chopper? So what was the point? Was it perhaps merely a desire for more power? Did Nessa really feel the need to exert her power like this? Was it a display of dominance? Was she trying to prove something? If so, what? And to whom? Elphaba had the sinking feeling that Nessa had only seceded Munchkinland to prove that she could. It that way, it was a show of her power. But why? Perhaps she wanted to prove herself capable? After spending her entire life as the helpless girl in the wheelchair, perhaps she had wanted to take a stand and leave her mark on the world too? It was a thought Elphaba could understand, for she had been in a similar place once…

And in truth, Elphaba was fairly close to the mark. Part of Nessa's choice to secede Munchkinland from Oz was indeed just a way to show off her power, not just as the next Thropp Eminent who had returned from disgrace after the last generation was kicked out of their home, but also her own personal power as Nessarose. She had made a bold move both to show off to the world, her family and herself that she was a strong, independent woman, both as the Eminent Thropp and as Nessarose. But deeper than that was Nessa's own desire for justice and liberation. Maybe Elphaba was the true social justice warrior of the family, but oppression was known to them all. Nessa, forever bound to her wheelchair and the pity and aid of others, knew all too well about discrimination, privilege, prejudice, disadvantage and equality (or lack thereof). Besides, she had grown up in the marshy Quadling Country. That was hardly an ideal place for a wheelchair. So she knew all too well about that sort of hassle.

While Elphaba chose to fight for the Animals, Nessa had chosen to fight for better accommodations for handicapped Ozians. And since Oz knew the Wizard didn't care, Nessa had decided to make the secession of Munchkinland as part of her plan. For one, it would show the world that just because she was armless and wheelchair bound did not mean that she was weak or incapable. Secondly, it would be quite an impressive symbolic gesture, showing that the Wizard could indeed be defeated and that Oz could rise up against him. So along with being a pragmatic and logical decision, acquiring more land, power and fame, the secession of Munchkinland was also symbolic. Nessa wanted to spread that message across Oz and maybe, finally, start fixing the problems that everyone, even Elphaba, had ignored for so long.

And yes, maybe Nessa could walk now thanks to Glinda's spell, but that still was not enough. It did not give her arms, so she was still handicapped in that way. Furthermore, as good as Glinda's spell had been, there were far more people out there than just her who needed some form of accommodation, whether it be for a physical or mental disability, and again, Oz knew that no one else seemed to care. Even Elphaba. While Elphaba had been out flying around trying to rescue Animals, Nessa had stayed closer to home trying to focus on her own people, those with handicaps whose autonomy had never been fully given to them because there were so little accommodations in Oz. Now, sure, Nessa was no saint and she could be a very ruthless social justice warrior, but couldn't Elphaba claim the same? They were each fighting for the liberation of their respective people, and they were each willing to use merciless tactics to get that freedom.

The only difference now was that they were each vying over whose problem was more important. While Elphaba believed that all oppressions intersected and needed to be treated together rather than separately, Nessa believed that it was silly trying to take so many struggles on all at once. But it made sense. Elphaba had traveled and seen the world. Nessa, meanwhile, was used to constantly having her issues shoved on the backburner (in a societal sense). While Elphaba understood how things were connected, Nessa was used to a world that constantly said, "We need to fix the bigger problems first, then we'll get to you," rather than, "everyone must be raised up together, or the entire world will fall."

Oh how similar the Thropp sisters were, each terribly unlucky in life, yet each still so determined to make it work. Whether they were really trying to do good, or just seeking attention, did not really matter. What mattered was that both of them had been broken over time and were exerting their control over whatever they could because they had scarcely ever been in control of anything before. While Elphaba clung to her dying crusade for the Animals, and for Fiyero's family, Nessa clung to the delusions of grandeur that she would be able to control a newly seceded Munchkinland. Perhaps she could for a while, but what would come of it in the long run? The country would turn into a tyranny and even if she remained blind to its faults, her subjects most certainly would not. There would be discontent, maybe even an uprising. Munchkinland would not last under Nessa's rule. She was trying hard to make it work, and succeeding at the moment, but the end was still foreseeable, and it was not pretty.

But as badly as Elphaba wished to help protect Nessa from that, she knew in her heart that it was too late. In the same way she was still clinging to a dying dream, so was Nessa, and neither sister would be swayed from their position. Even if Nessa had always been the needier, weaker one of the pair (physically, mentally and emotionally) both Thropp sisters were painfully stubborn and determined. They also had a rather bad habit of hiding their emotions. In truth, a small part of Nessa wanted Elphaba back. She wanted her sister back. Maybe she wasn't planning on greeting her long-lost relative back with a warm smile and a friendly request to make up for lost time, but it was clear to an outside observer that Nessa wanted Elphaba back. Why else was she so determined to keep the green witch in Munchkinland? Even if Nessa's desires weren't totally pure, and instead did stem partially from a more sinister and manipulative goal, Nessa still wanted to see her family whole once again. And Elphaba had always been her favorite. Shell was… tolerable. But he was no Elphaba, for better or worse.

But now it was Elphaba's turn to be disinterested and despite Nessa's guarded and formal request for a Thropp family reunion, Elphaba declined. Even after Nessa promised her power, and a good position with work that would hopefully be somewhat fulfilling and successful (at least in comparison to what Elphaba had been up to so far) Elphaba still stubbornly declined. Even she was the true successor, she wanted nothing to do with it. She was essentially seceding from her family and their legacy, for better or worse.

But Nessa could not bring herself to mourn. She was sad to see Elphaba go, but she felt no compulsion to scream, cry, worry or ask if they would ever meet again. She merely felt… disappointed. But that was all. The two sisters were almost like strangers, their inability to properly express their emotions prohibiting a more reactive reunion from occurring. Instead, after the talk of successes, successors and secessions was over, the two parted on very formal terms.

"I will pray for your soul."

"I will wait for your shoes."

Then both witches turned. They never saw one another again.

AN: TBH, IDK what this is. It was just a long rambly thing about Nessa (who I'm still deeply fascinated with and legit want to see as a better foil for Elphaba. Make them both social justice warriors for different causes!) I still wish the book could've taken more time to look at her disability and woven it into a social justice narrative rather than just being used to make Nessa tragic and give her an excuse for her eventual zealotry. (IDK, this was just inspired by a reading I did for class about intersectionality and ableism. I know Nessa isn't exactly the best poster child for that movement, but I've been revamping her character to better fit that sort of narrative since it wasn't really ever discussed in-universe.)