Chapter Text
It had been years.
Longer than she ever intended.
Long enough that sometimes the memories felt like pages from a story she’d once read and somehow misplaced.
Years since Galinda of the Upper Uplands became Glinda the Good.
Years since anyone had seen the girl beneath the gold-tinted light, the crown, the immaculate curls.
Years since she had been known.
Now she had admirers, but no friends.
Petitioners, but no partners.
An entire city that adored her, but no single person who understood her.
In the beginning, she tried to ignore the loneliness. Told herself this was the cost of being “good.” Told herself goodness wasn’t supposed to require comfort. Or companionship. Or choice.
But eventually she realized something far harder to accept:
She had everything she had once wanted, but had lost everything she ever needed.
The Emerald Palace had a way of swallowing noise.
Even now, in the late hour, the halls felt too vast, too hollow, as though her footsteps sank into the green tile and vanished before they reached the next room.
The scent of polished marble and enchanted lantern oil clung to the air, a cold, crisp smell that reminded her of winter mornings at Shiz, except at Shiz she’d had people to laugh with, to gossip with, to cling to when the world became overwhelming.
Here, there was only silence.
She paused in the archway leading into the royal study, the former Wizard’s study, her breath soft and shallow as she adjusted the lantern in her hand.
The room glowed faintly emerald from the stained-glass windows lining the walls, casting long slanted beams of green light across the floor and over the enormous oak desk at its center.
Her desk, now.
Though she still never liked thinking of it that way.
She whispered, as she did nearly every night she entered:
“This used to be his.”
Not out of nostalgia.
Out of reminder.
A promise to herself: Do not become him.
Do not deceive.
Do not manipulate.
Do not rule for the sake of ruling.
And she hadn’t.
Oz now operated through local councils, provincial ministers, and elected representatives. People who had lived in their districts, knew their needs, and understood better than she ever could how to run a town or pass a law.
Glinda had no intention of sitting on a throne ever again.
Her role was different, strange, ceremonial, essential in ways she did not entirely comprehend.
Public morale figure. Symbol of unity. Occasional mediator. Familiar smile in times of crisis.
She traveled constantly, attending festivals, funerals, openings of new schools, treaty renewals, and diplomatic visits.
People looked at her and felt reassured. They felt safe.
But who reassured her?
She stepped inside. Her eyes went immediately to the stand against the back wall, the one that held the Grimmerie.
A subtle hum filled the air around the Book, an almost electrical sensation against her skin. The Grimmerie had never been quiet, exactly. Its magic was ancient, restless, shifting like a creature breathing in sleep. Most days, the pages fluttered softly on their own, as though disturbed by wind no one else could feel.
Tonight, they were still.
Stillness made her more nervous than movement.
Glinda set the lantern down and approached with hesitant steps. The scent of old parchment, warm, dusty, and faintly metallic, rose as she drew near.
As always, her heart squeezed with the same familiar ache.
It wasn’t only the Book she came for.
Beside it, resting on a velvet cushion, sat Elphaba’s hat.
The hat that had been thrown at her in a fit of cruelty.
The hat that had embarrassed her.
The hat that had become, inexplicably, the symbol of their friendship.
She brushed her fingers over the brim.
Soft. Worn. Faded from years of sun and rain and flying.
How many times had she begged Elphaba to let her buy her a new one?
“How many times must I remind you,” Elphaba would say, exasperated but amused,
“that this hat is a personal statement?”
A breathy laugh escaped Glinda before she could stop it.
The room felt warmer for a second.
Then it didn’t.
She drew away from the hat and turned to the Book.
She had honored Elphaba’s request.
She had learned the Book, at least as much as someone like her could learn it.
Magic had never come naturally to her.
Even the wand, supposedly her specialty, had always felt unpredictable, as though it was indulging her, not responding to her.
But the Grimmerie was different.
The Grimmerie did not require talent. It demanded desire.
The pages opened themselves for those with a wish carved directly into their heart.
The first time it had opened for her, she nearly fainted.
The letters shifted like droplets of ink moving across water, forming words and dissolving them, reacting to her pulse, her breath, her fear.
At first, she had panicked. She closed it, ran from the room, and didn’t return for two weeks.
But over the years spent alone in this castle, fulfilling her duties and then retreating here in the night, she had come back.
Night after night.
Page after page.
Studying, meditating, practicing the discipline Elphaba had always seemed born with but Glinda had to claw toward.
And now, after so long, she finally understood one thing:
The Book didn’t just show her her wish.
It waited for her to be brave enough to act on it.
She reached toward the cover.
Her hand trembled.
Not with fear, well, not only with fear, but with anticipation so sharp it bordered on pain.
She pressed her palm against the leather.
Warm.
Instantly warm, as though the Book recognized her.
“Hello again,” she whispered.
The cover cracked open.
The pages breathed, yes, breathed, rising slightly and falling with a slow, rhythmic motion. Letters crawled across the nearest page like living shadows, forming lines, rearranging themselves every few seconds as though they sensed her uncertainty.
Glinda swallowed and sat down at the desk. The chair creaked under her light weight. She adjusted her gown, smoothing the fabric nervously, and then pulled Elphaba’s hat into her lap.
The velvet felt cool against her skin.
Comforting.
Grounding.
“I hope you won’t be cross with me,” she murmured, stroking the brim.
She wasn’t sure Elphaba would approve of what she was about to do.
But the longing, the need, inside her had grown too heavy to ignore.
Oz needed her.
Her friends needed her.
And she…
She needed them.
She opened the Book wider.
Instantly, the air changed.
A soft pulse thrummed from the pages like a slow heartbeat. The ink glowed faintly gold, casting ripples of light that danced over her hands and arms.
The scent of old parchment deepened into something richer, like rain hitting stone, or wind over dry earth.
Magic had a smell.
She had never noticed that before.
Her breathing hitched.
“Steady, Glinda,” she whispered to herself.
She placed both hands on either side of the open page.
The gold light brightened.
The words arranged themselves again:
A wish of truth.
A heart unbroken.
A moment rewritten.
A price unspoken.
Her pulse spiked.
She knew this spell.
She had studied it more times than she admitted.
A spell not of time travel exactly, but of restoration, returning things to their pivotal moment when choice, fate, and feeling had collided.
It required a memory powerful enough to anchor the magic.
A memory of deep emotion, joy, grief, love, or regret.
She had all four.
She shut her eyes.
And let herself think.
She thought of Shiz.
Of the narrow dorm room with its mismatched beds and crooked windows.
Of the way morning light spilled across Elphaba’s face when she slept, turning her emerald skin almost translucent.
Of the laughter they shared despite everything, the whispered jokes, the late-night conversations, the stolen moments when the world felt small enough to be kind.
She thought of Nessarose, rolling her eyes when Glinda fussed too much, but secretly enjoying the attention.
Of Boq, timid and earnest.
Of Fiyero—oh, Fiyero—with his lazy grin and unspoken regrets.
She thought of their picnic at the edge of the Shiz grounds, the sun warm on the grass, Elphaba lying beside her as they stared at the clouds drifting by.
That was the first time Glinda had ever realized how much her world had changed simply because Elphaba was in it.
She thought of the moment everything fell apart.
The Wizard’s deception.
The mob.
The betrayal she hadn’t meant to commit.
The misunderstanding they never had time to fix.
Her chest ached.
She opened her eyes.
Tears blurred the glowing text.
“All I want,” she whispered, voice cracking, “is a chance to fix it. A chance to be with them again.”
The gold light surged.
Pages flipped in a wild gust, though no wind blew. The lantern’s flame extinguished instantly. The room plunged into a darkness illuminated only by the Book’s glow.
The spell was choosing her.
Glinda reached out and steadied the pages with trembling fingers.
Her voice came out barely audible:
“I can do this… for all of them.”
She squeezed Elphaba’s hat once, tightly, desperately, and then set it beside the Book with reverence.
Magic crackled through the air, static raising the hairs along her arms.
The emerald light from the windows dimmed, swallowed by the Book’s radiance.
Her heart hammered against her ribs so fiercely she thought it might break free.
She inhaled.
And began to chant.
The words did not come from memory, they came from feeling, rising from somewhere deeper than thought. They poured from her lips in a steady, trembling stream, each phrase vibrating through the room like the toll of a distant bell. The Book responded, lines of text rearranging themselves mid-sentence, symbols dissolving and reforming, the light intensifying with every syllable.
The floor beneath her feet quivered.
The castle walls groaned.
A wind, cold and sharp, rushed through the room, though the windows remained shut.
Still she chanted.
Her mind overflowed with memory:
Elphaba’s smile, rare, crooked, beautiful.
Her voice, soft in private, fierce in public.
Her eyes, lonely, longing, alive.
And suddenly—
Her words caught.
Her breath froze.
The world around her flickered, once, twice, like a lantern guttering out.
The air constricted.
The green light shattered.
Everything, castle, desk, Book, wavered like a reflection on water disturbed by a thrown stone.
Then the entire world turned black.
Silent.
Weightless.
Infinite.
And Glinda fell forward into the darkness.