FIC: Rise by Sin [Wicked]
Title: Rise by Sin
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Wicked
Characters: Nessarose, with Elphaba/Glinda and unrequited Nessa/Glinda
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nessarose knew that she’d been born wicked.
Author's Note: Written for the 2009 lgbtfest.
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”
-- William Shakespeare (Measure for Measure)
Nessarose knew that she’d been born wicked. The knowledge had settled about her shoulders like a cloak as soon as soon as she was old enough to garner some understanding of the world around her.
Everybody was born wicked. They wore their sins like a second skin. Prayer and piety could wash it away, but it had to be constant prayer and constant piety. Sin - a solid entity, a palpable foe to fight - would return if you did not remain vigilant, like a weed creeping through the flagstones or a leak in a roof. Small at first, but, by the time you finally rose up to take action, it would have threatened to overwhelm you.
As a child, Nessa had assumed that her sins were ordinary sins. Pride in her fierce sister and her darling brother, and envy when she looked at the whole young girls that occasionally passed by their house. Wicked, yes, but not irremovable. Not irreversible. She could cleanse herself. She could still be the holy daughter that her father deserved.
It wasn’t until her fourteenth summer that she realised the depths of her potential depravity.
Their small house - it was more of a cottage, really - was only a short distance from a brook that was often frequented by young Quadlings. Nessarose had never dreamed of walking down there herself, but she could see the frolicking children well enough from her father’s bedroom window. Sometimes she would kneel on the floorboards and say a silent prayer for the splashing boys and girls, hoping to absolve them of sins they probably hadn’t realised they were committing.
(Nobody had thought to tell her of the things that went on between men and women, but she knew about marriage and she knew a little about what occurred afterwards. She even knew that it could, in its own way, be something close to holy. There was nothing sinful about reproduction, although Nessa doubted that the ‘games’ in the brook were being played with anything so focused in mind.)
Only balmy summer day, the brook was occupied only by two girls. At first, Nessarose was relieved, since this meant she would no longer have to pray for them. (Although it would mean a few more prayers for herself. Jealousy - even teenage jealousy of their carefree games and thoughtless days - was a terrible sin. It sickened her to know that she could feel it.)
Soon, however, her relief turned into confusion, and then into something else entirely. She watched - astonished, reviled, thrilled - as one girl (dark haired, like Elphie) leaned forward to kiss the other. The water was cold, but the sunlight filtering through the canopy was warm. The light dappled their bare skin as they clung together. Slim fingers tangled in long hair and crimson lips traced the contours of damp breasts. Nessa’s breath caught in her throat as narrow hips bucked in response to the actions of a questing palm and gasping mouths pressed feverishly together again.
She didn’t understand what she was feeling, not really. She knew only that it was far worse than envy.
Prayers would not be able to save her now.
***
She had fallen in love with Glinda at first sight. Quadling Country was not known for being beautiful - the beauty it did possess was a beauty all of it’s own, difficult to understand if you hadn’t experienced it first hand (rather like Elphie, in fact) - and Shiz was far too loud for somebody who had grown up in relative isolation. Despite the warmth of Elphaba’s greeting, Nessarose had been frightened and painfully aware of every movement she made.
And then she’d been introduced to Glinda. It was a name she knew well enough, from her sister’s letters, but that was all she’d known. Elphaba had not described her roommate’s beauty or grace, only her existence. (If it had been anybody else, Nessa would have suspected that the descriptions were omitted because the writer had realised they wouldn’t do Glinda justice. As it was Elphaba, Nessa was inclined to think that she simply hadn’t noticed.)
Nessarose drank in her loveliness as if she was a flower glimpsing the sun for the first time following years of darkness. She had pushed all thoughts of Quadling girls - of fingers tightly gripping slender hips and bare breasts rising and falling rapidly with ragged breaths - out of her mind since that fateful day, focusing instead on scriptures and the purity she simply had to maintain. Glinda’s movements filled her with the same sensation of revulsion and pleasure as the girls in the water.
She would never forget the intensity of Glinda’s first appraising glance. Although she didn’t realise that she was being compared to Elphaba - not at first - Nessa couldn’t miss the frank, and rather unexpected, judgments being imposed on her. Glinda’s expression was hard, somehow, as if she was … less for being elegant, rather than more.
For the first time, Nessarose was truly aware of how different she was.
She’d always been conscious of being different, naturally, but she had never been conscious of how different she was from her dear Elphie. In the past, she’d linked them together automatically - the green girl and the broken girl, the daughters of Frexspar the Godly, the sinner and the saint - but her sister had built up a life of her own in Shiz. Nessarose wasn’t sure that she was going to be able to fit into it. She would have to fashion a space of her own.
There were precious few places available for a broken doll like her, of course, but she would do her best. Elphaba was still there, at least. Standing by her side was better than nothing at all.
***
Nessarose had expected life at Shiz to test her, but, in truth, it was almost too easy.
The genuinely pious were always tested. It was both their birthright and their punishment (for choosing a path that only the pure - who would relish the pain - dared to tread). She had intended to rise to the challenge. She had intended to prove that she was worthy. She had not intended to make friends, or to live a sweet and simple life at a university that felt more like home than Quadling Country ever had.
She was startled to find that she fitted in here, like a missing piece in a puzzle. Picnics by the canals, quiet conversations in the library, coffee in the many pleasant shops at the centre of the town … even her religious conversation was tolerated, if not enjoyed, by her companions. She found herself living the life she had so often dreamed of. Hours would pass without her being acutely aware of how damaged she was.
When she finally remembered, she would be struck by something close to a fever. There were no recognisable symptoms, and prayer - her cure for most ailments, physical or otherwise - did little to restore her to normalcy.
It didn’t occur to Nessarose that she was simply too happy to worry.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for Glinda’s place in her new life, Nessarose suspected that she would have gone for days at a time without devoting hours to dutiful contemplation and prayer.
Her presence was not the sort of challenge Nessarose wanted, because it was not the sort of challenge she thought she could win.
She found that she started to speak of religion more often than she ever had before, wrapping her holiness around her like a mantle. (As if Glinda would notice. As if Glinda would care.) What good was holiness if the rest of the world couldn’t see it? What good was piety if it could not protect you from yourself?
Sometimes Nessa was able to believe that she was a good as she wished to be. Sometimes she felt her sinful thoughts solidifying, coating her skin and filling up her throat.
As long as people only saw her righteousness, she could live with the corruption. She was fighting for her soul, and it was not a battle she intended to lose. Not yet.
***
After six months at Shiz, Nessarose realised the truth about Elphaba and Glinda.
She should have seen it sooner, perhaps, but she had been too blinkered, too focused on her own struggle for piety, to guess that her sister had already lost a similar battle. Elphaba had been her protector for as long as Nessarose could remember. A green knight without any shining armour to enclose her narrow frame, and spindled arms and a strong voice instead of a sword and shield. It was almost impossible to imagine that she would give herself over to something as dangerous as love. It was certainly impossible to imagine closed, ferocious Elphaba exposing herself so intimately to another person.
Nessarose didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when the truth - glimpsed in small gestures and shy smiles, and ignored for months - finally dawned. Her sister had never been able to comprehend religion, and Nessa had always known that she had to be pure for both of them, but it was almost too much to realise that Elphie was committing the same sin she was fighting against.
Prayers weren’t enough, but she said them anyway. It was the least she could do for her sister. It was the only thing she could do.
Sometimes, she would lie awake at night, listening to the soft sounds coming from Glinda and Elphaba’s room. (Glinda-and-Elphaba. Their names belonged together now, like rhyming words, like Elphaba-and-Nessarose once had. The green girl and the pink girl, the sinner and the sinner pretending to be a saint.) She would forget Nanny’s snores - forget Nanny entirely, in fact - and focus on the murmurs and moans she could pick up through the door.
She had no hands with which to touch, no palms to press against white skin and pink silk. Even if she dared to confess her sins - and how could she possibly confess? - Nessa would never be able to touch Glinda as Elphaba did. She could caress with her eyes, and nothing more. She would throw away her purity for an incomplete wickedness.
All she could do was lie still and listen to the soft mumbles and stifled groans on the other side of the wall. She couldn’t even trace a hand down between her own legs, to mimic dreams that would never - never - become reality. She pictured gold curls fanning out across her stomach as Glinda’s head dipped down past her navel, and graceful white fingers tracing the contours of her broken body. She tried to imagine pressing her lips to Glinda’s skin, nipping lightly at the flesh to leave a mark and taste the sin pooling in the hollows of the older girl’s collarbone, but she would always remember - before the picture became too solid, thank the Unnamed God - that Elphie was the person who was lucky enough to do that sort of thing. Not her. Never her.
Purity was supposed to hurt. It wasn’t supposed to break your heart.
***
There had been a time - a long time ago now, in another life - when Nessarose had been bruised by gossip. She’d been rather disgusted by hearsay - a waste of words when there were so many prayers in need of being said and so many worthwhile scriptures waiting to be written - and horrified by the lies people were happy to concoct about each other.
She’d been much younger then, of course. Softer. Her shell of religious fervour had hardened in the years since Elphaba’s disappearance. She was untouchable now. Incorruptible.
(Nessa had been bruised by wickedness then as well. Ironic, really, given the nickname she’d now earned for herself. She fought against wickedness these days. She struck out before the sin had a chance to settle.)
You had to make sacrifices to get anything done in life. Elphaba - the sinner, the green girl, the lost daughter of Frexspar the Godly - had sacrificed her sister and her lover for her cause (whatever it was). In a way, Nessa had been happy to sacrifice part of herself for the same reason. At least she knew what her cause was. At least she was still purer than Elphaba. (Her sacrifice had been the right sort. The godly sort. The sort that made her punitive purity all the clearer.)
She hadn’t seen very much of Glinda since leaving Shiz. She’d kept track of her movements - her marriage and her social circles and her regular trips around Oz - in the way a reformed alcoholic makes sure he is aware of the location of the drinks cabinet in any house he visits. Not because he wants a taste - not anymore - but because it is always best to be aware of your weakness. It is easier to avoid something if you’re aware you have to fight it.
Glinda was not going to claim another of the sisters. Elphaba had paid the price for her sins. Elphaba had paid the price for her love. Nessarose was not going to make the same mistake. Unlike Glinda, she would share her purity - her gifts from the Unnamed God - with the rest of the world, instead of her sin.
She bewitched axes and dispensed brutal justice and pulled apart happy couples if their sinfulness outweighed their godliness.
When she walked back to her room at night, her silver heels made sharp clicking noises on the stones of the hall. She would hear the wails of the bereaved and the sobs of the parted lovers through the open windows, and she never looked back.
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Wicked
Characters: Nessarose, with Elphaba/Glinda and unrequited Nessa/Glinda
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nessarose knew that she’d been born wicked.
Author's Note: Written for the 2009 lgbtfest.
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”
-- William Shakespeare (Measure for Measure)
Nessarose knew that she’d been born wicked. The knowledge had settled about her shoulders like a cloak as soon as soon as she was old enough to garner some understanding of the world around her.
Everybody was born wicked. They wore their sins like a second skin. Prayer and piety could wash it away, but it had to be constant prayer and constant piety. Sin - a solid entity, a palpable foe to fight - would return if you did not remain vigilant, like a weed creeping through the flagstones or a leak in a roof. Small at first, but, by the time you finally rose up to take action, it would have threatened to overwhelm you.
As a child, Nessa had assumed that her sins were ordinary sins. Pride in her fierce sister and her darling brother, and envy when she looked at the whole young girls that occasionally passed by their house. Wicked, yes, but not irremovable. Not irreversible. She could cleanse herself. She could still be the holy daughter that her father deserved.
It wasn’t until her fourteenth summer that she realised the depths of her potential depravity.
Their small house - it was more of a cottage, really - was only a short distance from a brook that was often frequented by young Quadlings. Nessarose had never dreamed of walking down there herself, but she could see the frolicking children well enough from her father’s bedroom window. Sometimes she would kneel on the floorboards and say a silent prayer for the splashing boys and girls, hoping to absolve them of sins they probably hadn’t realised they were committing.
(Nobody had thought to tell her of the things that went on between men and women, but she knew about marriage and she knew a little about what occurred afterwards. She even knew that it could, in its own way, be something close to holy. There was nothing sinful about reproduction, although Nessa doubted that the ‘games’ in the brook were being played with anything so focused in mind.)
Only balmy summer day, the brook was occupied only by two girls. At first, Nessarose was relieved, since this meant she would no longer have to pray for them. (Although it would mean a few more prayers for herself. Jealousy - even teenage jealousy of their carefree games and thoughtless days - was a terrible sin. It sickened her to know that she could feel it.)
Soon, however, her relief turned into confusion, and then into something else entirely. She watched - astonished, reviled, thrilled - as one girl (dark haired, like Elphie) leaned forward to kiss the other. The water was cold, but the sunlight filtering through the canopy was warm. The light dappled their bare skin as they clung together. Slim fingers tangled in long hair and crimson lips traced the contours of damp breasts. Nessa’s breath caught in her throat as narrow hips bucked in response to the actions of a questing palm and gasping mouths pressed feverishly together again.
She didn’t understand what she was feeling, not really. She knew only that it was far worse than envy.
Prayers would not be able to save her now.
***
She had fallen in love with Glinda at first sight. Quadling Country was not known for being beautiful - the beauty it did possess was a beauty all of it’s own, difficult to understand if you hadn’t experienced it first hand (rather like Elphie, in fact) - and Shiz was far too loud for somebody who had grown up in relative isolation. Despite the warmth of Elphaba’s greeting, Nessarose had been frightened and painfully aware of every movement she made.
And then she’d been introduced to Glinda. It was a name she knew well enough, from her sister’s letters, but that was all she’d known. Elphaba had not described her roommate’s beauty or grace, only her existence. (If it had been anybody else, Nessa would have suspected that the descriptions were omitted because the writer had realised they wouldn’t do Glinda justice. As it was Elphaba, Nessa was inclined to think that she simply hadn’t noticed.)
Nessarose drank in her loveliness as if she was a flower glimpsing the sun for the first time following years of darkness. She had pushed all thoughts of Quadling girls - of fingers tightly gripping slender hips and bare breasts rising and falling rapidly with ragged breaths - out of her mind since that fateful day, focusing instead on scriptures and the purity she simply had to maintain. Glinda’s movements filled her with the same sensation of revulsion and pleasure as the girls in the water.
She would never forget the intensity of Glinda’s first appraising glance. Although she didn’t realise that she was being compared to Elphaba - not at first - Nessa couldn’t miss the frank, and rather unexpected, judgments being imposed on her. Glinda’s expression was hard, somehow, as if she was … less for being elegant, rather than more.
For the first time, Nessarose was truly aware of how different she was.
She’d always been conscious of being different, naturally, but she had never been conscious of how different she was from her dear Elphie. In the past, she’d linked them together automatically - the green girl and the broken girl, the daughters of Frexspar the Godly, the sinner and the saint - but her sister had built up a life of her own in Shiz. Nessarose wasn’t sure that she was going to be able to fit into it. She would have to fashion a space of her own.
There were precious few places available for a broken doll like her, of course, but she would do her best. Elphaba was still there, at least. Standing by her side was better than nothing at all.
***
Nessarose had expected life at Shiz to test her, but, in truth, it was almost too easy.
The genuinely pious were always tested. It was both their birthright and their punishment (for choosing a path that only the pure - who would relish the pain - dared to tread). She had intended to rise to the challenge. She had intended to prove that she was worthy. She had not intended to make friends, or to live a sweet and simple life at a university that felt more like home than Quadling Country ever had.
She was startled to find that she fitted in here, like a missing piece in a puzzle. Picnics by the canals, quiet conversations in the library, coffee in the many pleasant shops at the centre of the town … even her religious conversation was tolerated, if not enjoyed, by her companions. She found herself living the life she had so often dreamed of. Hours would pass without her being acutely aware of how damaged she was.
When she finally remembered, she would be struck by something close to a fever. There were no recognisable symptoms, and prayer - her cure for most ailments, physical or otherwise - did little to restore her to normalcy.
It didn’t occur to Nessarose that she was simply too happy to worry.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for Glinda’s place in her new life, Nessarose suspected that she would have gone for days at a time without devoting hours to dutiful contemplation and prayer.
Her presence was not the sort of challenge Nessarose wanted, because it was not the sort of challenge she thought she could win.
She found that she started to speak of religion more often than she ever had before, wrapping her holiness around her like a mantle. (As if Glinda would notice. As if Glinda would care.) What good was holiness if the rest of the world couldn’t see it? What good was piety if it could not protect you from yourself?
Sometimes Nessa was able to believe that she was a good as she wished to be. Sometimes she felt her sinful thoughts solidifying, coating her skin and filling up her throat.
As long as people only saw her righteousness, she could live with the corruption. She was fighting for her soul, and it was not a battle she intended to lose. Not yet.
***
After six months at Shiz, Nessarose realised the truth about Elphaba and Glinda.
She should have seen it sooner, perhaps, but she had been too blinkered, too focused on her own struggle for piety, to guess that her sister had already lost a similar battle. Elphaba had been her protector for as long as Nessarose could remember. A green knight without any shining armour to enclose her narrow frame, and spindled arms and a strong voice instead of a sword and shield. It was almost impossible to imagine that she would give herself over to something as dangerous as love. It was certainly impossible to imagine closed, ferocious Elphaba exposing herself so intimately to another person.
Nessarose didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when the truth - glimpsed in small gestures and shy smiles, and ignored for months - finally dawned. Her sister had never been able to comprehend religion, and Nessa had always known that she had to be pure for both of them, but it was almost too much to realise that Elphie was committing the same sin she was fighting against.
Prayers weren’t enough, but she said them anyway. It was the least she could do for her sister. It was the only thing she could do.
Sometimes, she would lie awake at night, listening to the soft sounds coming from Glinda and Elphaba’s room. (Glinda-and-Elphaba. Their names belonged together now, like rhyming words, like Elphaba-and-Nessarose once had. The green girl and the pink girl, the sinner and the sinner pretending to be a saint.) She would forget Nanny’s snores - forget Nanny entirely, in fact - and focus on the murmurs and moans she could pick up through the door.
She had no hands with which to touch, no palms to press against white skin and pink silk. Even if she dared to confess her sins - and how could she possibly confess? - Nessa would never be able to touch Glinda as Elphaba did. She could caress with her eyes, and nothing more. She would throw away her purity for an incomplete wickedness.
All she could do was lie still and listen to the soft mumbles and stifled groans on the other side of the wall. She couldn’t even trace a hand down between her own legs, to mimic dreams that would never - never - become reality. She pictured gold curls fanning out across her stomach as Glinda’s head dipped down past her navel, and graceful white fingers tracing the contours of her broken body. She tried to imagine pressing her lips to Glinda’s skin, nipping lightly at the flesh to leave a mark and taste the sin pooling in the hollows of the older girl’s collarbone, but she would always remember - before the picture became too solid, thank the Unnamed God - that Elphie was the person who was lucky enough to do that sort of thing. Not her. Never her.
Purity was supposed to hurt. It wasn’t supposed to break your heart.
***
There had been a time - a long time ago now, in another life - when Nessarose had been bruised by gossip. She’d been rather disgusted by hearsay - a waste of words when there were so many prayers in need of being said and so many worthwhile scriptures waiting to be written - and horrified by the lies people were happy to concoct about each other.
She’d been much younger then, of course. Softer. Her shell of religious fervour had hardened in the years since Elphaba’s disappearance. She was untouchable now. Incorruptible.
(Nessa had been bruised by wickedness then as well. Ironic, really, given the nickname she’d now earned for herself. She fought against wickedness these days. She struck out before the sin had a chance to settle.)
You had to make sacrifices to get anything done in life. Elphaba - the sinner, the green girl, the lost daughter of Frexspar the Godly - had sacrificed her sister and her lover for her cause (whatever it was). In a way, Nessa had been happy to sacrifice part of herself for the same reason. At least she knew what her cause was. At least she was still purer than Elphaba. (Her sacrifice had been the right sort. The godly sort. The sort that made her punitive purity all the clearer.)
She hadn’t seen very much of Glinda since leaving Shiz. She’d kept track of her movements - her marriage and her social circles and her regular trips around Oz - in the way a reformed alcoholic makes sure he is aware of the location of the drinks cabinet in any house he visits. Not because he wants a taste - not anymore - but because it is always best to be aware of your weakness. It is easier to avoid something if you’re aware you have to fight it.
Glinda was not going to claim another of the sisters. Elphaba had paid the price for her sins. Elphaba had paid the price for her love. Nessarose was not going to make the same mistake. Unlike Glinda, she would share her purity - her gifts from the Unnamed God - with the rest of the world, instead of her sin.
She bewitched axes and dispensed brutal justice and pulled apart happy couples if their sinfulness outweighed their godliness.
When she walked back to her room at night, her silver heels made sharp clicking noises on the stones of the hall. She would hear the wails of the bereaved and the sobs of the parted lovers through the open windows, and she never looked back.