Chapter Text
It’s not as if Glinda would complain , per se, about being removed from the most boring meeting of the week.
It’s only a pleasure to miss a room full of men arguing endlessly about which county was more important, trying to solve a conflict that had already been both decided and solved. And yet, it was a weekly occurrence, one Glinda bore but hated.
So when she’s steeling herself to enter the room and then suddenly not there, it isn’t as if it’s the worst thing that has ever happened.
She’d just rather like to know how she got from the conference room at the palace to what appears to be a dilapidated old shack. She glances out the window, and doesn’t recognize the scenery. She sweeps her gaze around her and finds walls pock-marked with holes, a creaking floor, a threadbare rug. Not exactly the place she came from.
And all of that wouldn’t be a great imposition. She can and will simply magic herself back to the right place. Glinda lifts her wand, heaving a sigh at having only delayed the inevitable, and that is when she hears it.
“Hello, Galinda.”
She’s sure she’s dreaming then. Perhaps she passed out. Maybe it’s all some grand hallucination that her bored mind created.
All of that seems vastly more likely than….the owner of that voice standing in front of her.
That voice, whose last memory to her is an agonized scream. The one before that, a promise.
I know I’m who I am today because I knew you. .
The voice she has heard in a thousand dreams, a million nightmares. The voice she’ll never forget as she traces her fingers over the brim of a hat, the rim of a small green bottle. The voice that is why she is where she is. The lifetime joined with hers, the legacy she will protect, always .
“No,” she breathes. “No, it can’t be. It’s not.”
Her voice wobbes. Her feet tip forward, as she rocks. She feels off-kilter, adrift.
And then she sees movement.
She doesn’t look like Glinda remembers her. Mostly the same, yes, but there are differences. Her big coat covers up most of her green skin. Her face is a bit softer, more rounded. Her green eyes are soft, a bit scared. She holds her hands out in front of her, as if she wants to steady Glinda, but can’t complete the motion.
“E…Elphie?” the name she hasn’t said in nearly six months feels barbed coming up. It feels like it has teeth. It feels like that one word evokes nearly six months of crying herself to sleep.
I’ve had so many friends. But only one that really mattered.
There’s a flicker of a smile on the green face of the vision in front of her, the figment of her imagination.
Because this had to, it had to have been a dream. Glinda pinches herself hard, wanting to wake up, needing to wake up. She could not wade further into this. She could not dare to hope.
Pain erupts sharply from her arm, and the apparition’s face looks down, concern furrowing her brow.
Glinda cannot look at her. Cannot allow herself to believe this, cannot conceive of it, cannot separate it from the agonized scream she hears every day.
And yet….that half-quirked smile, the smile so perfectly Elphie , it stands right there in front of her.
It’s like being transported to another place. To a warm room, adorned in pink, flopping onto a bed scarcely big enough for both of them and clasping hands with the only friend who has ever mattered.
“You’re….you’re alive,” Glinda breathes, reaching out a hand so like Elphaba, but her hand falters near Elphaba’s face. Her living, intact, breathing, alive face.
Glinda’s mind spins.
How could she be alive? She heard her die. And yet, here she is, smiling at Glinda as if nothing was ever wrong.
“I need your help,” Elphaba whispers. “I know it’s not…”
She breaks gaze, glancing down in a very un-Elphie way. Her head bows for a beat, before looking up, but not directly at Glinda. Around them, near Glinda, but not at her. And when her gaze does swivel back, there’s something desperate in it. Something new.
“I need your help.”
Help . The last time Glinda offered her help, it was too late.
And as it always does, for a second, Glinda fumbles, a bit lost in the what could have been . If I were braver, if I were stronger, as strong as Elphie…
That reverie does not, cannot, last long.
The door crashes open, and Oz, hasn’t Glinda been through enough today?
But the door opens, and in crashes a scarecrow. Not just a scarecrow, Glinda realizes. No, this scarecrow looks familiar. They’d met, with a man of tin, a shaking lion and a child between them. Then, she’d scarcely spared him a glance. Now…he moves a certain way. As if he’s dancing, she notices.
He barely looks at her, his gaze swinging over to Elphaba, flames in his painted eyes.
“How could you!” he rasps, and for the second time that day, Glinda’s heart stops.
She knows that voice. The voice is the second voice in the nightmares, the one she hears pleading for his life. The second one she can’t save.
The second too late of her life.
“F…Fiyero?” she gasps.
He turns, and she’s seen him before. But she didn’t….she didn’t see him. Not the man who slept next to her for three years. Not the man who stood next to her on a stage and promised to not stop, never stop, until he found the witch.
Well. She supposifies at least that one wasn’t a lie.
And then he smiles at her. It’s a thin smile, painted on and odd looking, but it’s….Oz, it’s him . An unquestionably Fiyero smile.
“Hey, Glin,” he says, and that’s all she gets before he whirls back to Elphaba.
“How could you, Fae? We agreed …”
And that’s all she gets before it devolves into an argument that, from what Glinda has heard of her Popsicle and Momsie, sounds very much like a married person fight.
There are words being thrown back and forth, words she only catches snatches of. Perhaps she’d hear more, but her head is spinning.
“You promised -”
“It is the only way -”
“It’s too damn dangerous! I told you I’d -”
“It’s our chance! Our only chance to -”
“To lose everything? To die on a stake in a cornfield - “
“The stakes are higher now -”
“Exactly! Too high to -”
“Nobody has to know -”
“Oh, now you’ve ensured that everyone will know! Did you even think about -”
“You asshole, that is all I was thinking about -”
It spins around and around Glinda as she desperately rubs at her temples, trying to stave off a pounding headache, swaying dizzily until -
“ Enough!”
It’s loud, louder than she has ever yelled in her life. But it gets both their attention, their shocked gazes swinging back to her, like they didn’t realize anyone else was in the room.
Glinda supposes some things never change.
“You both don’t get to drag me here - and yes , bringing me here by magic counts - after six months of thinking you were both dead , and then ignore me! In point of fact -” Glinda walks up to both of them, shoving a finger in their faces.
“I feel like the first thing you owe me, the first in a long line, is an explanation. A good one.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Elphaba’s voice is different than she’s heard it. Higher, more desperate. “We are running out of time!”
Glinda’s brow furrows. “Time for what?”
Elphaba’s mouth twists in a frown, and she wobbles a bit on her feet. Despite the anger showing through even in his scarecrow form, Fiyero reaches out and grabs her arm, steadying her.
She casts him a grateful look, tracing one hand over his burlap cheek, before turning back to Glinda, who is looking away.
The blame is gone, mostly.
She doubts she’ll ever not hear “I’m going with her,” playing in her head, but she knows it can’t be helped, not in any sense of the word. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to see, though. To see the tenderness between them, when that’s not a Fiyero she was ever privy to.
Elphie always was, though, as it turns out.
And now she’s turning to Glinda, one hand pushing Fiyero behind her, waving up and down to indicate him.
“He’s a scarecrow.”
At that, Glinda can’t help an eyeroll. “I did notice that.”
As if she’s not understanding, Elphaba shakes her head. “No, Glinda. He’s not supposed to be…I made him like this. I did this.”
Fiyero slides in next to her, a stuffed arm snaking around her waist. “Fae…”
But Elphaba shakes her head again. “No…I did this to him. And it’s…Oz, I’m so grateful to have him alive. But it’s not…this is not him . Not as he could be. Not as he should be.”
“For the record,” Fiyero butts in. “Not that this seems to matter, but I don’t mind.”
She shoots Fiyero a glare, but he doesn’t back down.
“He deserves…they both deserve -”
At that, Fiyero shoots up, anger clouding his features again, and the next “Fae,” feels like a warning.
The message clearly gets through to Elphaba, because her face flushes a darker green instantly, and she clamps a hand over her mouth.
Fiyero breathes a single breath out. “Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Do you finally understand how dangerous this is?”
She spins back to him, attempts to reach out to him but he ducks away. She retracts her hand, hurt flashing in her gaze.
Fiyero steps back, angrily pushing some straw around his torso, but Glinda knows this expression. The anger, the hurt it covers, the fear…oh yes, she knows this all too well.
Fiyero throws a gloved hand out to indicate Glinda.
“You might as well show her now. Since apparently, we just decided to throw away everything we’ve built for six months, risk everything, what’s to lose now?”
“Yero…”
“Since the brainless one of us is apparently the only one of us who can conceive of the whole ‘nobody can ever know’ thing, she may as well know. Oz, maybe the entire world should know, since safety is apparently not something we worry about now!”
Again, he dodged Elphaba’s attempt to reach out to him, instead indicating her heavy coat. “Show her.”
“Yero, please…”
“ Show her .”
There’s a long pause, and the throbbing at Glinda’s temples makes the world blur a bit around the edges. Nobody speaks for long moments, until she sees Elphaba visibly relent with a sigh. There’s the sound of fabric unlatching as green fingers pluck at the buttons on her coat, still looking beseechingly at Fiyero, whose painted eyes gleam.
The coat drops to the floor and with a deep breath, Elphaba turns to face Glinda.
She sees it right away. How could she not?
Elphaba doesn’t wear a corset, and under the chemise, Glinda sees the prominent curve of her belly.
Her mouth falls open. The headache intensifies.
Elphaba’s hand passes over her belly. “Glinda,” she says softly. “I know this is….”
“Elphie…”
Another pause fills the little room, emotions swirling in a vortex around all of them.
And then Elphaba straightens her shoulders, lifts her chin, and Glinda sees the girl she knew, the proud, fearless girl who let nothing and nobody bring her down.
“Glinda,” she says, strong and resolute. “I want him to meet his son. But I want him to meet his son as him , not what…not what I turned him into. And…” she reaches out, lacing her fingers through Glinda’s.
“I need your help.”