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1
Glinda the Good spends the better half of five months wondering what it is that she keeps eating that disagrees with her stomach so much. She’s already thrown up her breakfast- she hardly ate an hour ago and her stomach is grumbling again, threatening her as she makes another mad dash to her ensuite.
Elphie stirs from the bed- their bed , as Glinda calls it, hearing bare feet slap indignantly against the emerald floors. Glinda has been sick for a while, Elphaba has pushed and pushed for her to visit the doctor, but Glinda insists she’s fine- “It’s just stress Elphie. You worry too much!” she harps every time her food reappears.
Elphaba rolls over in bed, duvet barely covering her verdant skin as she yawns, arms taught and sheets sliding over her. She hears another retch.
There’s typically not much to it, nothing new to worry over. Glinda throws up once or twice, emerges from the bathroom and feels sorry for herself for the morning and is all better and ready to tackle the day's tasks by the thirteenth hour.
Yet today, she doesn’t reappear from the bathroom for a good while.
Nearly a whole thirty minutes, Elphaba muses, still half asleep.
She’s gotten used to this, sleeping with literal royalty. She tries not to get too comfortable, too used to the luxuries of Emerald Palace living, but it’s far too easy to love. It’s been a whole half year since her fake death, the wider Ozian public believing with certainty that Elphaba Thropp - The Wicked Witch- was dead as a doorknob. It was always a sore topic between the two of them, the lack of an actual, long-term plan hanging over their heads like a death warrant. She knew this couldn't last forever. Half of Glinda’s staff knew she was here, she just paid them enough to keep their mouths shut. But the fear of this information leaking was something that kept the two of them up at night, knowing that someone might slip up, and Elphaba could be killed for real.
On the growing list of things Glinda the Good had to worry about, it was firmly rooted at the top.
Back in their generous ensuite, Glinda sobs once.
Startled, Elphaba freezes, limbs too tangled to allow for quick manoeuvres. She listens intently instead, gaze fixed on the locked bathroom door.
There’s another cry again, quiet and muffled as if she has her hand pressed to her mouth. Elphaba’s blood runs cold, and she shoots up, grabbing hastily at her discarded clothes from the previous night to cover herself and she treads over to the door.
Her knuckles rap on the door gently, warm. Non threatening.
Glinda shudders a breath beyond the door and after a minute or two, clicks the lock open. Elphaba pushes the door ajar so she can see her, assess the situation.
Glinda, hair mussed and half falling out of a pony tail, sleep shirt hanging temptingly off her shoulder, takes a step back and stands square in the middle of the bathroom.
In her hand, Elphaba recognises a split second before her entire world shifts slightly forever, is a pink and yellow positivepregnancy test.
Oh.
2
This is Glinda starts to think just as another bone-knashing contraction tears through her, such a bitch.
She’s only four hours in and already eight centimetres, a miraculocious feat the Doctor she doesn't know the name of tells her, but Glinda the Good is already so very over giving birth.
It’s been a mess since her water broke. On the sixteenth hour on the literal one day Elphaba is out of the Emerald city, Glinda the Good hobbled her way to the telephone machine and called, very diligently thank you very much, for her midwife. Only for her midwife, an older Bear who much reminds her of Elphie’s Dulcibear, to inform her that she’s already attending another birth, and will send the Doctor instead.
Great.
This was the bit she was dreading the most, the climax of the whole last nine months. She had heard horror story after horror story and planned the day from the word go. Elphie would be by her side, she’d be attended to by her actual Midwife and she would be so relaxified that the baby would practically pop out and she would at long last, have her baby in her arms.
But as the universe so had it, it would not happen as such.
Elphaba had been informed the second her waters had broken, but was still a few hours out in Quadling country. To Glinda’s knowledge, she was currently speeding on horseback and would be back, soon-ish.
Not soon enough, Glinda’s mind gritted out, her hand crushing the poor trainee Midwives in her grip. When Elphaba arrived, she would pop this baby out and promptly strangle her girlfriend.
Glinda feels untethered, a body rife with red-hot agonising pain, her back shredded with contraction after contraction. Her hair has long fallen out of its style, sticking to her forehead like a crown of thorns as sweat beads her brow.
This is misery. her brain croaks out and although it will be worth it, Glinda finds it hard to focus on the end result when her current predicament is so jarring.
After an hour more of panting and groaning her way through contraction after contraction, she is told she’s ready to push. Just then, Elphaba, as red in the face as her verdigris will allow it, bursts through the doors and darts to her side.
“Oh sweet, oh my sweet I’m so sorry.” she musses, a thousand apologies tumble from her mouth as she shoos the trainee away and links her hand to Glinda’s. “I am so sorry I took so long. I think poor Feldspur’s legs gave out when we arrived. Oh love, you’re doing just excellent.” she babbles and presses a kiss to Glinda's sweaty forehead.
It takes Glinda exactly three pushes to meet her son.
He doesn’t slide out like she predicted, and he doesn’t cry either- for a good few minutes while the Doctors work their magic, Glinda’s heart tips on a tightrope. Elphaba’s hand is so tightly wound around hers she’s sure they've both drawn blood, but it isn’t important.Her son is the most important thing.
For two agonising minutes, he doesn’t make a sound, and another doctor shuffles into the room with a scary looking device, but Glinda can’t look away. Through their fussing, she catches glimpses of him- of tiny toes, blonde curls and green skin.
He cries, finally, and when they press him to her bare chest, her son screams. The lights in the room burst in an instant and the doors open and slam shut in celebration and Glinda can swear she feels a gust of wind race through the room, but all she can look at is him.
She’s crying again, she never really stopped, but the tears roll silently now, one dripping onto his stomach. Feather light, she wipes it off and his tiny, tiny hand comes to grasp around her finger. Instantly, his crying seizes and he looks up with big, deep brown eyes.
The exact same eyes as hers.
It’s the only thing of hers, she notes a few days after Liir- his name is Liir!- is born. Other than the striking blonde of his hair, he is all Elphaba. Eyebrows, ears, nose, lips, freckles- they’re all Elphaba. Glinda can’t bring herself to care.
She’s got a son, and that’s all that really matters.
3
It’s on Liir’s third birthday that Glinda realises how fast the time has flown.
She’s thirty two now, over a decade has passed since Shiz, it feels closer to an entire lifetime. And yet, the past three years of being a mother have been the quickest and most treasured years of her life.
Their little boy is growing, surely and steadily. He’s shy- worryingly so, but Duclibear insists Elphaba was the same at his age and it eases her heart a little. Elphaba and Liir are so similar, practically the same person the older Bear muses whenever she comes to visit their little cottage, about every other week. They’ve built a perfect little life here. Their home is close enough to the Emerald City so Glinda can still attend her Throne Ministerly duties, now on much reduced hours, and far enough away from the city that Elphaba can leave peacefully.
The general public know she’s alive now- not long after Liir was born, a pardon was put into place to reintegrate Elphaba into society. This was quite possibly the last plan they would’ve ever resorted to, but given the addition of another green individual now in the world, the decision was made in order to give Liir the best life possible.
It was decidedly not Elphaba’s favourite idea, but her son deserved a life beyond the castle and she would do anything to ensure he didn’t face the same treatment she did.
Now, with Glinda back into her role as Throne Minister and out of the house during the meat of the day, Elphaba and Liir spend their days together. Liir absolutely loves books, they’ve learned to Elphaba’s delight. She reads to him every night, any book he asks for, even her most dull history books are a wonder to the little boy. He’s even started speaking in ‘full’ sentences, and despite his outward appearance, his personality is so very Glinda. He’s repetitive, his speech mostly consists of copying his mothers, giggling wildly when Glinda uses one of her famous Glinda-isms. Liir adores Glinda, adores them both, but when she toss-tosses her hair and he toss-tosses his blond curls right back, she knows she won his heart.
4
Liir is decisively not a fan of his new baby sister.
She screams non-stop, something his mothers insists is normal for a baby of two days old, but must she cry so often? He’s not getting much sleep, neither are Glinda or Elphaba, always up in turns to feed or change her or to read to him until he falls back asleep again. He considers, very briefly, about hiding in Dulcibear's thick coat the next time she visits so he can go home with her and finally get a full nights rest.
The first time he had met Dorothea - his Mama calls her Dotty, cause she’s so small - he was struck by how similar they looked. Her ears, tiny and perfect and pointed, just like Liir and Elphaba’s, and her skin, a deep juniper colour like his mothers and freckled like his. Her tiny fists gripped his finger like a lifeline. How can something so cute and small make so much noise?
Liir would never understand it.
He got the opportunity to hold little Dotty a few days after she was released from hospital. His mothers were cautious- she was tiny, a lot smaller than Liir was, so he was told. They spoke in hushed whispers, flitting round and holding his baby sister with the gentlest hands. When his mother situated him on their bed, flanked either side of him and placed his little baby sister in his arms, Glinda supporting, Dorothea has seized her almost incessant crying. Her hand latched onto his fingers again, huge green eyes staring into his own deep pools of brown. Green fingers brushed feather light through her fair smattering of curls. Liir grinned, and decided quite ceremoniously that he did, in fact, like his little sister.