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Elphaba left Glinda’s apartment knowing that would be her last visit. The years she had spent touching down to spend her nights in a soft, pink, hazy bubble were over. They had to be, if she was going to do what she had set out to do. They had to be, if she was going to maintain any sort of discipline.
As she flew back towards her hideout, closer than Glinda would’ve realized, an abandoned apartment in a rough sector of the Emerald City long-neglected by the Wizard and his leadership, she thought back to her conversation with Glinda the night before. I think I might need you , she had said, and she had meant it. Glinda had been right. Elphaba had grown entirely too comfortable having a soft place to land, one arranged for her by the Wizard, albeit without his knowledge.
She was disgusted with herself, for taking even the tiniest bit of Wizard-related luxury made available to her, for allowing herself to become so distracted by Glinda, for the way every step she had taken in Glinda’s apartment had left a dirty footprint on her principles. She was appalled she had ever allowed herself to become so dependent on another person, least of all Glinda, with her selfishness and her fear, Glinda, who had already proved herself to be untrustworthy with Elphaba’s cause, untrustworthy with her heart. If there was one thing her years in near-isolation had taught her, she couldn’t trust anyone who could live without her, only the Animal refugees whose lives depended on her leading them to safety.
She certainly couldn’t trust anyone with an appetite for fame and the moral backbone of a snail.
She had resolved to forget about her nights with Glinda, to avoid anywhere she might be near, even if she couldn’t forget about their friendship, even if she couldn’t stop wearing the hat. She was doing so well, too, launching herself fully into her work. She may have taken a bit of a turn into some more personal vengeance–destroying monuments to the Wizard, telekinetically digging bricks out of his yellow brick road, breaking up raids on Animals suspected of collaboration with rebel groups (which these days was any Animal who lived too close to the Emerald City) by launching fireballs at the arresting officers–but she told herself that her anger was a righteous one, that it was only directed towards all the injustice she had been seeing in the world since she was young.
Then, one night, when she was spying on a few Ozian civilians who she had suspected of making an anonymous report against their sheep neighbors after a dispute over a noise complaint, she heard them discussing Glinda’s engagement. To Fiyero.
Elphaba bristled immediately. Had Glinda and Fiyero still been together this whole time? She had just assumed they had split up, that there was no way Glinda could say the things she said to her, could do the things she did to her, and still be with him. She felt her power rustle through the bristles of her broom and forced herself to keep quiet, to stay concealed just below the open window of the civilians. She needed to hear more.
“I heard Glinda asked him,” one of the Ozians cooed. “And that it was incredibly romantifying.”
Elphaba frowned. In her mind, it hadn’t been long since she had ended things with Glinda–somewhere between three and four months, if she was doing a good job keeping track–and likely even less time since Glinda had realized things were over. Many times she had been tempted to fly by her building, to check the balcony doors, but she had resisted, and in her absence, Glinda had gone and done… this?
“The wedding’s coming up, isn’t it?” a different Ozian piped in. “I hear there’s a lottery for invitations! Wouldn’t it be exciting to get to go? Glinda’s been planning ”
Elphaba pushed off the wall of their home, having heard enough. She imagined Glinda standing in front of her, arms crossed, smirking. She imagined her with a ring on her finger, a smug gesticulating hand. She imagined her in her robe. She imagined her dropping her robe to the floor. She imagined sucking that ring off of Glinda’s finger, spitting it onto the ground, pushing her down into the bed, reminding her who every inch of skin belonged to…
Soon enough, she was at Glinda’s balcony. The doors were open.
Elphaba stopped, peered in. Glinda was at her desk. She looked up when she felt herself being watched. As she stepped outside of her room, her expression was indecipherable.
“Nice of you to drop by,” she said.
Elphaba felt the wall of the statement, cold rough emotional stone between the two of them. She wanted to smack it with something heavy.
“You look good,” Elphaba said, eyeing Glinda’s left hand, searching for a ring.
“Don’t I always?” Glinda asked, raising her eyebrows. She smiled conspiratorially. “It’s good to see me, isn’t it?”
Elphaba didn’t dignify that with a response.
“Congratulations,” she said. “On the engagement.”
Glinda nodded at her. She leaned forward against the balcony’s railing, crossing her arms in front of her, elbows pointed out in such a way that Elphaba still couldn’t see her knuckles, no matter how hard she looked. Elphaba hovered backwards an inch.
“I couldn’t be happier,” Glinda said haughtily.
Elphaba’s lip curled with disdain. She shot forward, swooping onto Glinda’s balcony in one smooth motion, landing just behind her, so that Glinda had to turn around to face her. Glinda gasped a little at the feeling of the air whooshing behind her, or perhaps just the presence of Elphaba a few inches from her back. She didn’t turn right away, not until she was sure Elphaba wouldn’t reach out to her, wrap a hand around her waist or maybe her neck.
“We both know that’s not true,” Elphaba said.
“Is that so?” Glinda asked, but the way she stepped further towards Elphaba, the way she brushed her body against Elphaba’s at any plausibly deniable angle, betrayed her.
“I just can’t believe it’s to him,” Elphaba said, despite the fact that her own long fingers had begun to drift to Glinda’s waist, mere seconds away from slipping under her shirt. “After all this time. I never would’ve thought that would last, especially after… well, you know.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Glinda said, like it was a dare.
Elphaba put her hands on her then, pulling her inside, not even kissing her until she’d stripped her. She pushed Glinda up against the wall, running fingers across Glinda’s ribs, down to her pubic bones, over her hips. She watched Glinda’s lower lip bob and couldn’t help but lean in and kiss her with a ferocity. Any gentleness she may have had before, and it had already been rare, was thrown completely out the window, and soon enough, Glinda was thrown onto the bed, face down.
Elphaba pulled her up by her waist, positioned her on her knees. Glinda arched her back, stuck her ass as far into Elphaba as she could. Elphaba pulled her apart a bit, opened her up to look. Glinda was already dripping. Elphaba smirked and ran her fingers along the inside of Glinda’s thigh, raking, teasing.
“Elphie, please,” Glinda whined.
“Mmm, I don’t know,” Elphaba said, a mixture of amusement and animosity. “You’re about to be a married woman.”
“What?” Glinda said, high and breathy, annoyed that this was where Elphaba was drawing the line.
“If you really want it,” Elphaba said slowly, tapping Glinda’s ass and then reaching for her hand, “you’ll have to do it yourself.”
It took Glinda a moment to realize what Elphaba meant, but when it dawned on her, Glinda let out a little puff of air, half gasp half sigh. Propped uncomfortably on one elbow, she wrapped her fingers around two of Elphaba’s and reached behind her, trying to find a good angle. She gasped when Elphaba’s hand brushed her spread pussy, again when her own knuckles did. It took a tremendous effort, one full of faint gasps and whines, but eventually she managed to force Elphaba inside herself, instantly rocking her hips back, eager for more.
Elphaba thrust in, rough and deep and quick, sending Glinda toppling over, her elbow failing her and her face pressing into the mattress. She stayed that way for a while, moaning into her pillow, until Elphaba decided she had to hear her more clearly and pulled her back up. Her free hand found Glinda’s tit, tugged at her nipple, admiring the obscenity spilling from Glinda’s lips.
She stopped her thrusting, curling her fingers deep inside Glinda, pressing her finger pads against her. Glinda made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a scream, low in her throat but high in the air, and loud, so loud she had to bite her lip to cut it off.
From somewhere below, a voice called out, “Miss Glinda? Are you okay?”
Elphaba froze, and Glinda’s eyes shot open.
“Is she there?” the voice continued. “Is she hurting you?”
Elphaba rushed to the balcony doors, only managing to catch a glimpse of the Emerald Guard below the railing before she was forced to rush back in, dodging a first round of gunfire, slamming the doors closed behind her and waiting for the shooting to stop before she could barre them. Glass rained down against Glinda’s beautifully furnished hardwood floors.
“Fuck,” Glinda exclaimed. She was sitting up now, her sheets held to her chest.
“Did you know about this?” Elphaba rounded on her. “Was this engagement part of some sort of plan? To lure me here and trap me? I knew you would be angry with me but I never imagined—“
“No,” Glinda cut her off. “No. Oz, no, Elphie. I can’t believe you would even think that of me.”
Elphaba fought back tears. She had no idea how she was going to get out of this. It had somehow never occurred to her that she could be in any danger in Glinda’s apartment. She felt so unbelievably stupid.
“Did you tell anyone?” she asked, the shake in her voice echoing the one in her hands. “Did you tell anyone about our meetings? Is there anyway—Could she know?”
“No!” Glinda explained, knowing instantly when Morrible was being evoked. She ducked her head then, embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t say anything—of course I didn’t say anything—but the other day, she mentioned how you must feel, seeing me happy with Fiyero, seeing the life I have… I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, she’s always used our competitiveness to control us. But maybe. Maybe somehow…”
Elphaba cupped her hands around her neck, trying to ground herself, trying to still them. All she could feel was of course . Of course Morrible knew about them, at least in some way. She had seen what they had meant to each other at school. She had probably always known.
“I don’t know how I’m going to make it out of this,” Elphaba said, thinking of the last time she had been surrounded like this, on the roof of the Wizard’s palace. She had barely made it then, if she was being honest.
“Use me,” Glinda said. “As a shield. Keep me in front of you. They won’t shoot me, I know it.”
“How?” Elphaba asked.
“Just hold me like I’m your hostage,” Glinda said simply. “I can pretend.”
Elphaba shook her head.
“No, how do you know they won’t shoot you? They could say it was my fault.”
Glinda looked at her conspiratorially, ducking her head and lowering her voice.
“The Wizard and Morrible need people to be afraid of you, of course,” she said. “But they can’t have them too afraid. They need them to hate you, but they need them to trust in them. They have to seem like they have some control over everything, and if Glinda the Good is slain by the Wicked Witch, well… the people of Oz would certainly have something to say about that.”
“Are you sure you’re not overestimating your own importance?” Elphaba asked, halfway hesitant.
Glinda looked affronted.
“Certainly not. We have polls about these things, you know. I am consistently very well liked. My numbers rival the Wizard’s. No one else’s do that.”
Elphaba didn’t know whether to smile or groan, to laugh or scream or curl up in the corner and hope she could sleep through the rest of this situation.
“Okay,” she finally said, tossing Glinda’s robe to her. “Here, put this around you.”
Glinda pulled the robe on. She looked pale, one good fright away from burying herself under her covers and leaving Elphaba to fend for herself, but she took a deep breath, pushed back her shoulders, and stepped easily into Elphaba’s arms. Elphaba wrapped her arm across the tops of Glinda’s shoulders, clutching her broom in her other hand, and walked them over to the balcony doors.
“Wait,” Glinda said. “Will I see you again? After all of this?” When Elphaba said nothing, she added, “I think I might die without you. I might…”
“You don’t need me,” Elphaba said quietly. They both knew it was a lie. After all, they had already told the truth, and it was far too late to push back.
Glinda took a gasping breath when Elphaba said it, like she was on the verge of tears. Elphaba imagined her eyes squeezed shut.
“Do it,” Glinda said, her voice shaking.
“Glinda-” Elphaba started, but Glinda insisted.
“Do it.” She wiped at her eyes and chuckled humorlessly. “Now it’ll be really believable.”
Elphaba breathed deeply and unlocked the balcony doors.
“Don’t shoot!” Glinda shouted as soon as they were open. “Please don’t shoot.”
Below them, the guards looked at each other then lowered their guns ever so slightly.
“Put them all the way down,” Elphaba instructed. “Or I’ll push her over.”
The guards obeyed, less reluctant that she had expected. She steadied herself. Glinda reached up and squeezed her elbow. Elphaba, pissed as she was, tapped a thank you against Glinda’s arm before shoving her forward and pushing off into the sky. The men picked their guns back up as fast as they could and began to shoot.
“Elphie!” Glinda called out, because she couldn’t help herself.
The guards were too late. By the time they were tugging on their triggers, Elphaba was soaring far above where they and their guns could reach her.
She didn’t return to Glinda’s balcony because it was too risky. She continued her angry work.
Soon enough, things were the same, until they weren’t. Elphaba was being careful, until she wasn’t. A wedding was happening, until it wasn’t. And then Elphaba was back at the Wizard’s palace, trying to free the monkeys, and Fiyero was pointing a gun at her, and then at the Wizard, and then Glinda was there, trying desperately to smooth things over until Fiyero was coming with her, with Elphaba, and Glinda stopped abruptly, with all the heartbreak of a teenager crestfalling across her face. Elphaba could only watch her, feeling the air in the room thicken with the evocation of their secret nights.
“What are you saying–that all this time, the two of you…” Glinda looked only at Elphaba. “Behind my back?”
“No,” Elphaba said quickly. She was struck with the harshness of Glinda’s despair in the same moment as she realized what she meant. Elphaba had been in and out of Glinda’s bedroom, seemingly on no schedule but her whims, for what had turned into years, and in all that time, Glinda had never been able to get her to so much as mention where she spent any of the rest of her time. Could some of it not have been with Fiyero? After all, at one time, they almost… The very idea of that, the idea that Glinda was even considering that a possibility, risked the sanctity of their bond, the very heartstrings of fate, or of something stronger, even, that brought them together despite their circumstances, despite themselves. All Elphaba had to convey this sentiment was a look and a vague reiteration. “No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Except that it was.”
Fiyero looked only at Elphaba, and it dawned on her. He was in love with her. He had been, all this time. His eyes were wide, sharp, full of a stern kind of longing, a stubborn kind of need, and they were so like Glinda’s, but the need was not for security, not for a title and nice sheets and the safety of a penthouse apartment, but for Elphaba alone. He looked over his shoulder, back to Glinda.
“Only it wasn’t.”
Glinda couldn’t quite seem to take the reassurance. She knew that Fiyero loved Elphaba, that he had loved her. Elphaba could see it, every little secret threatening to spill over her cheeks like tears. Glinda had kept him from her. Some little part of her had felt that, if given the chance, Elphaba might choose Fiyero, and because of that, she had kept him from her. Elphaba felt herself harden as Fiyero said, “Let’s go.”
And so she left with him, and she tried not to think about the fact that this was at a minimum the second chance Glinda had to run away with her, and yet she never did.
Elphaba and Fiyero found somewhere to lay low at the edge of the Emerald City. They were running West, to Fiyero’s family’s castle, where he promised they’d be safe. The journey would be long, especially since Elphaba had released the monkeys. She wasn’t sure whose side they’d chosen for the time being, as much as she hoped to sway them, mostly for their own sake, so she could help them, but also for the relief of taking near total control of the skies. For now, she and Fiyero would travel mostly on foot.
They stopped somewhere in the woods, in an abandoned fox den Elphaba had been given permission to use at her discretion, having helped its residents move up even deeper into Winkie country, where they’d hopefully be safe, at least until she could get them to a neighboring kingdom, or state, or whatever else was out there. They huddled in that fox den, close together, so close.
“You’re beautiful,” Fiyero said, his hand tracing her cheek with a gentleness that Elphaba found she could actually believe.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Elphaba said wryly, an old flicker of insecurity mixing with newer feelings of guilt at the kind of person she had become, at the hurt she was able to cause and the glee with which she found herself doing it.
“It’s not lying!” Fiyero insisted, because he didn’t know. He only saw what he wanted to see. He was always doing that. Still, he paused, sensing Elphaba couldn’t accept it from him, even if he didn’t know. “It’s looking at things another way,” he said carefully.
Elphaba was so tired. Maybe she could try to look at things differently, too. Maybe she could try to change her heart, if only for a moment. After all, Fiyero had come to her. He could see that she was worth more than a life of Ozian luxury, that she was worth the risk. Here he was, so beautiful in the moonlight, so real. Still, Elphaba couldn’t help but think of Glinda, of how much this was going to hurt her, about how much more it would hurt if she really did this with Fiyero. She couldn’t decide if hurting Glinda further was a deterrent or a motivator. The bitterness of the impulse surprised her; her heart was more complex than she’d realized.
“What is it?” Fiyero asked, drawing her out of her thoughts.
It took Elphaba a moment to find what she wanted to say. Her heart was a bundle of wire, chords of heartbreak, of jealousy, of relief, of wanting–maybe it didn’t matter who it was. Maybe it was just enough to have someone, especially someone with the bravery to choose her like this.
“It’s just, for the first time, I feel…” She swallowed hard, gathering all of her guilt and her shame and her pining, all of those complicated Glinda-feelings, into a lump in the back of her throat, leaving only a smug, resentful desire to cause hurt in her pleasure. She looked at Fiyero like she could eat him. “Wicked.”
She closed her eyes before she kissed him. As much as she loved him, she knew it was different than the way he loved her, that their chance to turn onto the same page, to fall for each other like a storybook was long past. She couldn’t bear to look at him for too long, his eyes so bright with conviction, when she knew that when she kissed him, she kissed him in anger, with a vengeance. Still, as much as the guilt tugged at her gut, it felt good to be selfish for once, to allow herself to do something wrong, to turn the hurt onto someone else rather than step further into the everpresent knife in her side. Besides, if Fiyero never knew all of why she was doing this, could it even hurt him?
How much did she owe him? Was it anything more than the trust, and friendship, and yes, love she was prepared to offer him now?
When he kissed her, she thought of the way Glinda kissed her. When his hands roamed her body, she remembered the way Glinda's did. When he fucked her, she thought of the way Glinda's eyes had looked when she had thrust into her with all of her love, when she had weaved it into their sex, which was supposed to be just sex, but Elphaba should've known. At yet, though she thought of Glinda, though she couldn't help it, she slept with him anyway.
They were somewhat interrupted by the wail of the wind, or maybe it was the wail of a person, or both, inextricable to Elphaba’s ear. There was a storm on the gusty horizon, a cyclone in the distance, and Elphaba knew. She knew that Nessa was in danger, and regardless of how they had left things, regardless of how they always left things, she had always been Nessa’s caretaker, and more than that, she would always be Nessa’s sister.
She left Fiyero in a panic.
When she reached Munchkinland, Glinda was there. Of course she was. She was always right in the middle of whatever was most relevant, whether it was a banquet or a natural disaster–though Elphaba was beginning to suspect this particular disaster was an unnatural one. After watching Glinda give away Nessa’s shoes to the bratty child that had stumbled her way into the middle of a conflict far more serious than she seemed remotely capable of comprehending, Elphaba’s anger, which had previously sat in the pit of her stomach, keeping her warm, brief in its flare ups, was stirring like a volcano.
Not trusting herself to be around the child, to look keep herself from slicing off her feet at the ankles, prying the cold, dead flesh out of her sister’s shoes–her mother’s shoes–Elphaba fled from the scene, leaving Glinda to do whatever the hell it was she was there to do, and set off instead to her old home. She intended to raid it, to search for anything that she could remember her family by, anything that could feel like a piece of her sister. She hadn’t been perfect, but she had been Elphaba’s. From the moment she was born, she had been Elphaba’s, her playmate, her confidant, her earliest, and often only, friend. Now, she was gone. Elphaba’s loneliness rattled in her stomach like a snake’s tail.
She thought of the strangeness of the circumstance. They rarely got twisters in Oz, least of all in Munchkinland. She thought suddenly of Morrible, and her breath stopped in her throat. She clutched at her chest as the awful truth of it took hold. She thought again of Glinda, of all the pictures in the papers of her smiling dutifully by Morrible’s side, of every joint press conference they had hosted, the grainy snippets over the radio that Elphaba had managed to catch listening outside someone’s window. She almost vomited.
When she reached her family home, the guards wouldn’t let her in. She was tempted to torch the front door, to give them a reason to run, at least for a few minutes, to fetch a pail of water to put it out, but she just couldn’t do it. She sulked all the way back to the scene of the crime, choosing to walk with her shoulders slumped and her head bowed in mourning.
When she returned, Glinda had assumed a similar position, kneeling almost to the ground. Elphaba couldn’t stand the sight of it. Her loneliness rattled again.
“What a touching display of grief,” she said dryly.
“I don’t believe we have anything further to say to one another,” Glinda said angrily.
Elphaba remembered suddenly what she was angry about, that she suspected there was something more to Elphaba and Fiyero’s relationship, that there had been for some time. It felt laughable compared to Nessa’s broken corpse, the sticky permanence of death that had settled over Munchkinland only to be met with song and dance. Elphaba was struck once again by the callousness of Glinda’s priority. She scoffed.
“I would appreciate some time alone to say goodbye to my sister,” Elphaba said, almost pushing Glinda away from the house with the force of her presence, though her eyes flinched away from Glinda, as if she were as painful to look at as the sun. She felt wet grief build up in her voice. “Oh Nessa… forgive me…”
“Oh, Elphie,” Glinda murmured, stepping closer, seeking to comfort, but Elphaba wouldn’t be comforted, not when she suspected only sympathy in Glinda’s voice, not remorse, not repentance. “It’s dreadful–it is–to have a house fall on you. But accidents will happen.”
Moments before, Elphaba couldn’t bear the thought of looking up at Glinda, but the word accident had her head snapping up, all reflex.
“You think this was an accident?” she hissed, disbelief radiating off of her like venom.
Glinda gulped, defended herself, and Elphaba couldn’t take it. She just couldn’t take it. Soon enough, she was raising her voice, numb to the moment of her mourning, deaf to her own voice. She couldn’t tell who started it, couldn’t remember who got the first word, but when Glinda threw an unkind word her way, she threw one back, a harsher one, and soon enough, they were fuming, standing close, their teeth primed to gnash, their mouths primed to bite, or maybe to simply press against flesh, against one another, until all their roughness could be smoothed into something more dangerous than when it was sharp.
And then Glinda touched on Fiyero, not by name, but the shape of him was clear in the air her words spilled into, and Elphaba’s hurt, built up over months of rejection and resentment, was palpable. She wanted to scream, to cry, to choke on every vicious feeling she’d ever felt because of Glinda, to air out all of their ugliness; but she was suddenly conscious of potential Munchkin eyes, watching from a bush, or a field, or even a house with a terrace. Even in all of her anger, Elphaba couldn’t bring herself to risk Glinda’s reputation, her safety, not if it wasn't something she chose. Still, she was angry.
“I know it must be difficult for you to imagine that someone like him could actually love someone like me,” she spat, knowing Glinda would get it, knowing Glinda would see it, would hear and yet you couldn’t choose me , would think of every similarity Elphaba had drawn between her and Fiyero, every difference Elphaba had discerned between their motivations for working with the Wizard. She knew that Glinda was making those same connections, those same discernments, that she probably had been long before Elphaba would’ve ever thought to do so.
Glinda’s fingers were stiff across Elphaba’s face. It could’ve been a slap, if they didn’t linger, if they didn’t stutter at Elphaba’s cheekbone, almost hovering, unable to go through with it. Elphaba might’ve preferred a good hard slap to the torture of Glinda’s stiff, gentle fingers, they way they refused to caress her but lingered still. Elphaba stepped back, away from the sickly sweet stifling air in Glinda’s constant bubble of space. She lifted her own hand, reached out, but she couldn’t bear to feel the buzz of Glinda’s face against her fingertips.
Then, the guards arrived. Then, they formed their tactical band to protect Glinda from whatever wicked thing Elphaba was going to do to her next, and Glinda was shouting in protest, pleading to be the one to handle Elphaba as she saw fit, with anger or with fear or with Oz knows what else. But pleading was a far cry from action, and Elphaba remained surrounded by men with guns.
When Fiyero swooped in to save her, it was a better punishment than anything Elphaba could’ve thought up. She watched Glinda’s face fall, watched her shoulders slump with the weight of her failure. She watched Glinda see what it would look like if she could be what Elphaba deserved, what she truly needed, all of that other messy emotional needing be damned.
Still, when he trained his rifle on Glinda, Elphaba was the only one of them to flinch–not when he did it, but rather when Glinda stepped forward, closer into the line of fire. The guards switched their guns from Elphaba to Fiyero, who still seemed fearless in his heroism, a stark contrast to the stoicism of Glinda’s constant, settled fear, and to Elphaba’s desperation.
“Go!” he shouted to her. “Get out of here!”
“But-“ Elphaba tried to say because she knew what was coming for him, she knew what they would do, especially to him, their fearless captain, a traitorous defector. She knew what the Wizard would want done.
She locked eyes with Fiyero. The last few years of his life had been marked by sacrifice, dedicated to rising in the ranks of a system he hated, all to search for her. The last few years of his life were sacrifice, and his eyes said, what’s one more? One more big one? Elphaba was going to vomit.
“Please,” Fiyero said. “Just go.”
And so she did. She fled to his family’s castle in the West and was welcomed at Kiamo Ko with open arms. The second she got there, she slammed open the Grimmerie, sifting through it for what could help. Always with a mind of its own, the Grimmerie settled on something, something she could barely decipher. She read it anyway. She prayed to everything she knew to pray that it would work.
After Fiyero, she stumbled through a grand succession of lowest moments, battered and beaten and giving into a certain kind of mania that had her tormenting a child over the memory of a sister who would always be a child to her. It wasn’t until Glinda arrived that everything began to slow down, that Elphaba began to be able to breathe again.
With her fresh breath came clarity. Elphaba couldn’t do this anymore. She was going to get herself killed, and Glinda had known it all along. She watched the way that Glinda worried her bottom lip, tried to memorize the way it caught between her teeth, the fidget of Glinda’s hands, always itching to reach out to her, the way Glinda’s eyes widened when she was so in love that she was trembling with fear. Elphaba wanted to say, I love you .
“You are a handprint on my heart,” she said instead, holding Glinda’s hand firmly to her chest.
When Fiyero’s letter arrived, she saw her way out. She pushed through her grief, her exhaustion, her heartbreak, pushed herself into a resoluteness that would get her through the next few moments.
She heard the angry march of the Wizard’s guards on the stone staircase leading up to the tower. She looked at Glinda with a kind of desperation.
“You can’t be found here,” she said. Her voice was strong again. “You have to go.”
“No–” Glinda tried to protest, but Elphaba wouldn’t let her.
“Yes. Yes, you must.”
“No!” Glinda exclaimed because she would never go easy on Elphaba. Her eyes were swimming with a kind of anticipatory grief. “Elphaba… I’ll tell everyone the truth.”
“No,” Elphaba said resolutely. “They’ll just turn against you.”
And what good would that do? When Glinda was the only one with any real power who had a good heart, who Elphaba had come to know, despite her selfish streak, despite her ambition, despite all the privilege and luxury she had been born into, had a good heart. When Elphaba looked at her now, all she felt was trust.
“I don’t care!” Glinda shouted. She was trying to make a demand, to stand firm, but it came out more like pleading.
“Well, I do!” Elphaba snapped. She took a careful breath, knowing what she was about to ask would be the worst thing she had ever asked anyone to do. “Promise me you won’t try to clear my name.”
“Elphaba, no!” Glinda exclaimed, her voice breaking. She looked horrified.
“Promise,” Elphaba insisted.
Glinda looked at her, really looked at her, searched her face for any sign of hesitance, and when she didn’t find it, she relented. She allowed Elphaba to hide her, to push her out of the room while Elphaba faced one last standoff with Emerald City’s finest. When she disappeared into the hatch in the floor, she covered it with her hat, tucked her little green bottle under the brim and thought of the innocence of a night of dancing and what it felt like to be a little less lonely.
When it was all over, she heard Glinda’s shaky footsteps above her. She heard Glinda sink to her knees, heard the familiar thump of her forehead, one that used to mean she was pressing her frustration into a trunk or a gesture but now meant she had dropped her face to the floor. She heard the soft sounds of choked back sobs. It took everything for Elphaba to stay covered, to stop herself from at least reaching out to Glinda, fumbling around in the open air, trying to catch the tears or Glinda’s hand.
After Glinda left, it was hours before Fiyero arrived. Elphaba bolstered her determination to stay hidden with thoughts of the outside world, thoughts of a future where she could sit in a humble home with a warm fire where no one could find her, with Fiyero’s companionship to keep her from the constant sinking feeling of being utterly alone in the world. Finally, finally he arrived with a knock on the hatch.
“It worked!” he said jovially as Elphaba pushed her way back out into the castle.
Elphaba embraced him, then drew back, feeling the pinch of straw poking out from his ragged clothes. She looked at Fiyero. He smiled at her, gently. He took her hands in his.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Touch–I don’t mind. You did the best you could.”
Elphaba brought a hand to his face, smoothing out the rough burlap of his new cheeks, feeling the familiarity of the lines of his smile.
“You’re still beautiful,” Elphaba murmured, marveling at his resilience, at her own work, come to life under her fingers.
She saw the hat, then, just beside her, on the floor. She remembered the last time she had set it onto the floor, when she had thought for a split second that putting it down could change what was happening to her, who she was, how she was liked. She remembered picking it back up when reality had set in. She cursed the way she was always going back there, to that night, to that moment, dancing with Glinda, stepping awkwardly around each other, Glinda somehow managing to mimic her movement after only a few minutes of watching, until they were practically in each other’s arms. It was a declaration of something, of friendship, of acceptance, a call for others to follow suit; more than that, it was a promise. When she had put it down this time, it was a question, and Glinda leaving it behind was certainly an answer.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Fiyero echoed, interrupting.
Elphaba pushed away her devastation. She tried to be here , in this moment, with this man, straw as he was, this man who loved her, who chose her. He’d thrown away everything for her; the least she could do was choose him back.
“It’s not lying,” she said, trying to force the forcedness out of her smile. “It’s looking at things another way.”
Fiyero smiled at her, put her hat back on her, and the weight of it on her head made it truly sink in that Glinda really hadn’t taken it with her. Could she find a hidden kindness in that? Maybe later. Elphaba squared her shoulders to spite the sting of tears behind her eyelids and headed confidently out into the night, determined to save her own life.