History Fanfic / TheLandOfWhatMightHaveBeen

** Vara explains that she joined the Deviant Nations after Unbridled Radiance took her son away, and when she joined the Irredeemables she had blue scales grafted on to herself in memory of the blue specks on her newborn son’s skin.** While Alpha considers herself as this to her children, [[spoiler:Elphaba immediately confirms that this is a lie when she visits the Empress's daughters who have been locked away since a Deviant weapon 'reactivated' the green genes they inherited from their mother, as Alphaba will only accept her daughters if they meet her definition of 'perfection' where Elphaba accepts them from the moment they meet]].

** Plans to kill the Empress reach a point where the only potential plans will only have one chance, as once Alphaba knows what they're trying she'll never let herself be in a position to be attacked like that again.

** The Radiant Empress still essentially considers herself Elphaba, albeit an Elphaba "purified" and "cured" of her past wickedness, but the Great Mentor has spent years convincing herself that the Elphaba she knew is basically dead and subsumed by something else.

** Later on, [[spoiler:Elphaba learns how to share memories with others while travelling through parallel dimensions, such as allowing her to show parts of her past with an alternate version of her mother, and later stops the Hate-Creature and the Empress by bombarding them with her own memories]].

* EveryoneHasStandards: Noted when Elphaba travels to an alternate world where her mother faked the infant Elphaba's death; as much as Elphaba resents her father causing her mother's death by forcing her to consume the milkflowers during her pregnancy, she recognises that Frexspar wouldn't do anything to endanger Melena if he ''knew'' her life would have been at risk.

* AlasPoorVillain: Ultimately the Empress and the Hellion are examples of this, as both were driven insane by exposure to powerful magics and would never have committed their crimes on their own.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Chapter 74 confirms that [[spoiler:Alphaba is this in regards to her children; while condemning the Childlike Researchers as a mistake, she uses their age-regression techniques to keep her daughters young until they can be 'cured']].

* TheImmodestOrgasm: [[spoiler: Alternate Nessa does not hold back when having sex with Dr Kiln, to the point that Elphaba initially assumes that she's being assaulted - resulting in mutual embarrassment when she bursts in on the two of them.]]

* ItOnlyWorksOnce: It is eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Nessa was subject to a form of purification that gave her a more standard appearance while possessing immortality, even without the procedure being sabotaged so that she retained her free will. She explains that Alphaba used the Grimmere to complete this particular procedure, but afterwards she was never able to replicate the circumstances and spells exactly and had to fall back on the more ‘standard’ purification]].

* UnderestimatingBadassery: Basically applies to [[spoiler:the Hellion in the flashbacks of her origin, as the mage-scientists' efforts to Purify her wiped all conscious memory of her identity while leaving her with some recollection of the magic she learned from watching her interrogators]].

** Once [[spoiler:Elphaba and her allies return to Oz and end up staging a surprise attack on the Emerald City; it's noted that she never would have dared to try such a thing in her first "reign of terror," as it had the advantage of numbers and guns. During her adventures in the other world, however, Elphaba has levelled up considerably, to say nothing of gaining considerably powerful allies... but the Wizard's troops haven't changed at all. A CurbStompBattle ensues, ranging from Dorothy knocking guards out with a touch to Glinda moving rapidly around the field in various shapes]].

* BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: Flashbacks reveal how the Empress basically became worse than the Wizard's most extreme authority, ordering the surgical "correction" on the disfigured and enforcing Purification on everyone judged 'deserving' in the name of making Oz what she thinks it 'should' be, arguing that the Wizard's actions were only crimes because they defied beauty where she is bringing it out in her people. When Glinda first sees the Purified, even while acknowledging that humans and Animals are equals, she reflects that the Animals seem more like taxidermy trophies than anything living and breathing, and is certain the true Elphaba would never have wanted this.

** Flashbacks show that the alternate Elphaba and Glinda's last purely civil conversation ended when Elphaba offered Purification to Glinda's son, referring to him as 'Distorted' just because he was unusually tall, and Glinda ordered Elphaba to stay away from her son.
** While Alpha considers herself as this to her children, [[spoiler:Elphaba immediately confirms that this is a lie when she visits the Empress's daughters who have been locked away since a Deviant weapon 'reactivated' the green genes they inherited from their mother, as Alphaba will only accept her daughters if they meet her definition of 'perfection' where Elphaba accepts them from the moment they meet]].

* ThisIsReality: When contemplating [[spoiler:how to defeat the Empress when there is a risk that the Empress's death would result in her mind taking over Elphaba's body, Elphaba rules out the idea they can kill the Empress and then return home because it would take too long and be too complicated for them to try and acquire the portal research from Unbridled Radiance and create a portal home before Elphaba's overwhelmed by her other self's mind]].
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Elphaba gives one to Dorothy regarding the way she easily accepted everything she was told about the 'Wicked Witches' and the Wizard.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Seems to define the final act of [[spoiler:Harnley, AKA Harker; guilty over his own memories of shooting down 'Alphaba' and starting her transformation into the Empress, along with his counterpart's memories of 'killing' Fiyero, he allows himself to be killed by the Champion rather than try to fight him]].

** Also applies to the Hellion; her precise origin was not revealed until Chapter 52, but she was always shown to be dangerous and twisted, to the point of being completely skinless and sporting tusks for teeth, a voice that seems to change as she speaks, and with arms in place of legs while she hovers through the air.

* LosingYourHead: When Elphaba and the Empress engage in a duel through a magic portal, [[spoiler:at one point Elphaba sees the Empress reattach her own severed head with no sign that she even lost consciousness during the fight]].
* LossOfIdentity: Chapter 53 establishes that [[spoiler:the Hellion lost all memory of her original identity when Unbridled Radiance attempted to convert her to Purification and her transformed state rejected all of their efforts]].

* LukeIAmYourFather: Used in the flashbacks when the Wizard tells alternate-Elphaba about her real parentage; for her part, the future Radiant Empress is so numb that she barely even cares - whereas Elphaba is completely shellshocked after seeing this within her other self's memories.

* NoodleImplements: In Chapter 71, after apparently coming up with an idea to [[spoiler: sneak out of the Creche and sabotage Unbridled Radiance from within]], Elphaba requires a jar and a change of clothes - without specifying what they're actually going to be used for.

** It's revealed that one of the many reasons why the Tin Man is so irrational is that ''his brains are starting to corrode''.

* BrainwashedAndCrazy: To various degrees for the residents of Unbridled Radiance, but particularly in the case of the Empress's champion, revealed after his death to be this world's version of [[spoiler:Fiyero, who was subjected to a complex spell to ensure his love for Glinda by mixing it with his feelings for Elphaba that seriously damaged his mind]].

** Dr Kiln is this throughout: if something ghastly has to happen, he'll usually be on the receiving end of it. Among other things, he gets shot through the glider wings, falls several hundred feet, is forced to lead Elphaba on a merry chase across Loamlark, gets accidentally drugged and sent on a massive trip, is reduced to paddling around an underground lake on a raft made of corpses, is raked over the coals by Elphaba on numerous occasions, and usually ends up saddled with patients who don't feel like listening to him. [[spoiler: In Chapter 66, the Empress burns him alive, and the only way he manages to extinguish himself is by flinging himself out the window and tumbling down the roof for several hundred feet before landing in a heap of broken limbs. And then Dr Coil comes along and ''asks if he can eat him.'' He survives, but he's left both exasperated and in considerable pain.]]

** Throughout Elphaba's journey through the void, [[spoiler: Roquat]] is continuously reciting inexplicable series of numbers for every dimension they visit. Later, when given access to Dr Lintel's dimensional gateway, she realizes that these were actually co-ordinates for the worlds - allowing her to use the portal to her advantage in the battle that follows - [[spoiler: heavily implying that Roquat was deliberately giving Elphaba hints that would give her an advantage over the Empress.]]
** Chapter 71 ends with [[spoiler: Roquat deciding to remain a passenger inside Elphaba's mind for the foreseeable future, then erasing her memory of their encounter so she won't try to remove him.]] In chapter 74, the Empress is able to paralyze Elphaba and eventually render her unconscious [[spoiler: unwittingly allowing Roquat to temporarily seize control of Elphaba's body and deliver some ExtremeMeleeRevenge.]]

* ParentInducedExtendedChildhood: In the final chapters, it's revealed that [[spoiler: the daughters of [[BigBad the Radiant Empress]] were hit with a biological weapon fielded by the Deviant Nations, causing them to begin manifesting the green skin their mother was born with. Unable to cure this condition, the Empress began dosing Elarose and Essella with a diluted version of Morrible's botched immortality serum, regressing them to childhood so they could retain their youth while she continued looking for a cure. However, it's also revealed that the Empress has since begun using this as a means of controlling them, not only regressing her daughters when they start growing up again, but every time they grow rebellious or [[ControlFreak express an opinion that she disapproves of]]. By the time Elphaba finds them, Elarose and Essella have been imprisoned in a GildedCage for decades, but still look like they're only nine years old and believe that they've only been confined for a week.]]

* PersecutedIntellectuals: Unbridled Radiance, despite insisting on the beauty of intelligence, does not allow intellectual liberties to its citizens, forces its artistic community to labour under ruthless censorship laws, and frequently punishes scientists who uncover facts that contradict official doctrine. [[spoiler: In the final chapters, it's revealed that the Empress is expanding the membership of the Childlike Researchers with deliberately infected intellectual offenders from around the Empire, trusting that their condition will destroy their "deviant" personalities and allow them to use their abilities as well-behaved children of the Empire. However, [[NiceJobFixingItVillain it's because of this brutal expansion]] that Dorothy and a magically-disguised Elphaba are able to sneak through enemy territory without raising suspicion]].

* AmplifierArtefact: When Glinda [[spoiler:is initially sent into battle, she uses a wand that turns out to be drawing on Elphaba's own magical energy, draining excess power from the witch-crystals in her body and channelling it to Glinda]].

* EmpathicWeapon: As well as Glinda's wand being an AmplifierArtefact (see above), it [[spoiler:only works because Elphaba's power would be aware of the energy sink on some level and resist being drained off by a stranger, requiring that the person who wields that power be someone the target implicitly trusts]].

* SuicideAttack: As time goes on, [[spoiler:Elphaba comes to the conclusion that the best way to defeat the Empress is for her to basically overdose herself on magic-amplifying crystals and blow herself up during a confrontation with the Empress, killing herself and potentially incinerating the Empress. Thankfully, she comes up with a better solution...]]

* TooKinkyToTorture: Invoked by Fiyero in a sense; when he's been captured by Loamlark and they attempt to interrogate him as a spy, he points out that they can't actually ''do'' anything to him that would actually cause him pain, since as a scarecrow he doesn't eat, drink, breathe or sleep, and he has as little regard for his own life as is possible to have without being actually suicidal so there's no point trying to outright kill him.

* EarAche: Colonel Gloss of the Strangling Coils sports a mangled ear, acquired when one of his past victims managed to take a bite out of him just before getting stabbed to death. [[spoiler: After he betrays Branderstove and joins the Empress, Dorothy bites his ''other'' ear off.]]

* YouCantGoHomeAgain: After [[spoiler:their final victory, prior to their return to Oz, Dorothy expresses uncertainty about if she even ''can'' go back to Kansas now after all the ways she's changed due to merging with the Hellion. The fic ends with Dorothy still staying in Oz with no obvious sign that she's planning to go back to Kansas; Elphaba has a vision of the future that shows Dorothy and Boq at Nessa's grave and later sees Dorothy walking down a street wearing a long dress to hide that her feet aren't touching the ground]].

* AmnesiaMissedASpot: Brought up when [[spoiler:the Empress's daughter Elarose questions her mother about why Elphaba is a "danger" to her and her sister, when Elphaba's spent almost an hour in their company and done nothing to hurt the twins]].

** The Deviant Nations eventually decide to [[spoiler:defeat the Empress by inflicting such a fate on her, planning to inject her with an overdose of the shapeshifting serum used by the Amorphous League so that she acquires excess shapeshifting powers far quicker than she can control them, which would result in her eventually collapsing into mulch and regressing to a basically brain-dead state]].

* ForWantOfANail: As well as the obvious alternate realities depicted here, it's noted in-narrative that the reason the characters are sent to the reality of Unbridled Radiance is because Elphaba's disintegrating sanity and raw magic created rifts in reality, which would have been calmed if Chistery had taken the right route in his flight to see the Scarecrow and take Elphaba a letter revealing his true identity.

* HeroicDog: Toto serves as this in as much as he can make any difference given his size, including [[spoiler:leading the rescue party to Dorothy when she's captured by the Hellion and guarding Morrible during the final battle]].

* PersecutedIntellectuals: Unbridled Radiance, despite insisting on the beauty of intelligence, does not allow intellectual liberties to its citizens, forces its artistic community to labour under ruthless censorship laws, and frequently punishes scientists who uncover facts that contradict official doctrine. [[spoiler: In the final chapters, it's revealed that the Empress is expanding the membership of the Childlike Researchers with deliberately infected intellectual offenders from around the Empire, trusting that their condition will destroy their "deviant" personalities and allow them to use their abilities as well-behaved children of the Empire. However, [[NiceJobFixingItVillain it's because of this brutal expansion]] that Dorothy and a magically-disguised Elphaba are able to sneak through enemy territory without raising suspicion.]]
* PortalCut: Dr Lintel is a master of portal magic, and in his regressed state, uses small handheld portals to clip stray bits of fabric off his clothing - presumably for nothing more than amusement. [[spoiler: When the Empress finally manages to piss him off, he uses the same spell to slice her arms, legs and head off in a fit of rage.]]

* PsychopathicManchild: The Hellion, with her love of "dolls" and her psychotic temper-tantrums, is a pretty clear case of this. At one point, she goes so far as to play "she loves me, she loves me not"... ''with a struggling captive's limbs,'' finishing up by ripping his heart out.

* TeamPet: Fiyero takes it upon himself to keep an eye on Toto until the dog can be returned to Dorothy, with Toto even joining [[spoiler:the mission to rescue Dorothy from the Hellion after Elphaba looked in on him]].

** The [[BrotherhoodOfFunnyHats Amorphous League]] induct new members via a ritual welcoming that ends with the prospective member taking their first dose of the shapeshifting potion, after which they experience a random bout of transformations. However, it's possible to [[ShapeshifterModeLock get stuck in one form]] in this first shapeshifting session, and recruits who can't - or won't - work up the willingness to change again will die once the potion wears off and their body starts changing back of its own accord. [[spoiler: Glinda briefly ends up stuck in this state when she joins the League, being trapped in Elphaba's form, and it takes a pep-talk from the ''real'' Elphaba to help her complete her metamorphosis.]]

** The Radiant Empress still essentially considers herself Elphaba, but the Great Mentor has spent years convincing herself that the Elphaba she knew is basically dead and subsumed by something else.

** Boq's counterpart was given a new identity as 'Mr Heart' when he started working with Elphaba, and went so far as to create a fake corpse of himself to fake Boq's death and outright states "Good riddance" once the experience is over, [[spoiler:although by the present he has defected to the Deviant Nations and shows some sympathy for the Tin Man]].

* DisproportionateRetribution: In a reality where Elphaba and Glinda met the Phantom of the Opera, Elphaba notes that the Diva Carlotta didn’t deserve what Erik did to her, as Carlotta was just vain and arrogant but never did anything truly bad to anyone.

** As part of Morrible’s NeverMyFault stance, she rants about how she [[spoiler:had a plan to stop the Empress that would benefit everyone, including Elphaba, when Elphaba’s role in said “plan” would have seen her basically reduced to embryonic goop so that Morrible could use her magic]].

* ItsAllAboutMe: The Empress erased all memory of Oz from most of the world mainly because she wanted to protect her image from [[spoiler:her children being affected by a biological weapon that triggered some of the dormant genes for Elphaba's green skin; the Empress has locked up her own daughters for years because they may compromise her image]]. Later, a conversation with the Empress sees her basically expressing her belief that she can accomplish anything up to altering reality itself just to make it fit her view, to the extent that she basically expresses the view that she is right if reality is wrong.

** By the time the alternate Oz was on the verge of splitting into civil war (as depicted in the flashbacks), the Empress had convinced herself that her attempts at being a hero were always flawed purely because she was ugly, and is so consumed by this idea on the importance of beauty that she even considers 'Purifying' Glinda's newborn son just because he's going to be unusually tall.

* [[LikeASonToMe Like a Daughter to Me]]: By chapter 53, although she won't say it explicitly, Elphaba finds herself acting almost maternally to Dorothy.

* ScrewThisImOutOfHere: When Dorothy's companions witness the Hellion literally tear apart a patrol of soldiers, the Lion affirms that they should move because he's never going to be comfortable staying close to the resulting mutilated corpses, with Boq and Fiyero immediately agreeing and Toto letting out a bark that Fiyero interprets as his own agreement.

* ShutUpHannibal: During the final battle, [[spoiler:Elphaba confronts the Hate-Creature that the alternate Frexspar has become by forcing him to experience her own memories of Nessa and glimpse the world where Melena faked her death, forcing Frexspar to acknowledge that ''he'' was the reason his family was miserable when he could have made everything better by simply accepting Elphaba as she was]].

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Obviously most of the Deviant Nations in particular have this, given how they rebelled against the Empress and were often separated from their families. A particular example is Vara, whose home village was repatriated when she was pregnant, and Vara escaped only after giving birth but never talks about what happened to her child.

** At least suggested for [[spoiler:the Hellion; seeing Toto is one of the few things that makes the Hellion pause for any time, almost certainly motivated by her own residual memories of her version of Toto, even though he must have been dead for years]].

** When Elphaba is left mortally wounded and stranded on the battlefield at the Hate-Creature's mercy, [[spoiler: Dorothy offers herself to the Hellion in exchange for saving Elphaba's life - a deal the Hellion gleefully accepts.]]

** Dorothy's counterpart has it even worse. [[spoiler: In the space of a single day, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are killed, Kansas is scorched off the map, and Dorothy herself is flayed alive and mutated by portal radiation, before finally being yanked off Earth and into Oz - before being left alone, horribly wounded and in agonizing pain. And this is how the Hellion was born]].

** Elphaba is vulnerable to the anti-Irredeemable gas weapon, Purity, but is nevertheless essentially immune to a tracking system that reads her as the Empress despite her green skin.

* SnakesAreSinister: Played with in the case of Dr Coil, a friend and tutor of Dr Kiln; while creepy, amoral and a former supporter of the Empress - not to mention mutated to Kaiju-proportions - he also rescues Boq from No-Man's Land and offers his full support to the Deviant Nations. Plus, he's nice enough to ''ask'' if he can eat live prey first.

* TransferableMemory: A side-effect of dimensional displacement is that people start experiencing dreams of their other selves if two versions of the same person are in one reality. As a result, Elphaba, Glinda, Dorothy, Fiyero, Boq and the Lion all start dreaming of their counterparts' lives even before they actually meet or recognise their other selves directly (although in Fiyero's case [[spoiler:his counterpart died before Fiyero learned he was in another reality]]).

** Later, ''our'' Glinda decides to join the [[BrotherhoodOfFunnyHats Amorphous League]] to help cement their alliance with the [[LaResistance Deviant Nations]]. As soon as her initiation is over, she quickly grows to enjoy the weird sensations associated with using her new shapeshifting powers, finding the process of altering her size, shape, age, gender, and species a thrilling experience. And that's ''before'' she gets to the fun of actually putting these different shapes to practical use.
** In the final chapters, Elphaba ends up trapped behind enemy lines and has the Alternate Morrible [[FountainOfYouth drain her age]] so she can disguise herself as one of the Childlike Researchers - a transition she doesn't enjoy in the slightest for the sense of diminishment and weakness involved. However, when she finally abandons her disguise and reverts to her true age, Elphaba finds that growing up again at high speed is accompanied by a huge surge of adrenaline and endorphins that she describes as empowering and even "godlike".

* UnpredictableResults: When [[spoiler:trying to save Fiyero from being 'converted' into the new Champion, Elphaba has to resort to amateur sabotage of the equipment being used to move his soul into the Champion's rebuilt body in the hope that she will disable the features that would reprogram Fiyero's mind]].

* SituationalDamageAttack: In a roundabout sense; at one point the Deviant Nations are bombed with "Purity", a gas weapon that causes any Irredeemables to be temporarily driven insane and turn against their unnatural appearance but does absolutely nothing to anyone normal. When Elphaba is exposed to it, she starts using her own nails to try and tear her skin off before she is found by Dorothy, who deliberately dived back into the gas-filled room to find the Witch once assured that it couldn't do anything to her, and is knocked out in time to get over her exposure.