Chapter Text
Elphaba collapsed, exhausted, on the bed in the guest chambers. Dawn was breaking. She couldn’t remember staying up this late since Dulcibear snuck her a book on Lurlinism when she was eleven or twelve years of age.
The party had been overwhelming, but Elphaba hadn’t wanted to give Fiyero the satisfaction of being free of her. It was petty, certainly, but he’d clearly wanted to dissuade her from coming. He had been stiff and uncomfortable ever since she arrived. Elphaba was disappointed to see him be so susceptible to the Wizard’s propaganda. How little had it taken to change his mind about her? She’d heard him in the woods, chasing after her, urging his soldiers to capture her. Calling her “that wicked witch”. It broke her heart. So she’d braved the party to spite him.
Glinda had been thrilled, of course. She’d dragged Elphaba around by her arm all night, shoveling canapés and flutes of fizzy wine at her and introducing her to so many people. Like at Shiz, it was baffling how far Glinda’s public approval seemed to get you. Being so clearly well liked by Glinda the Good had instantly bought Elphaba grace and patience with almost everyone. And she certainly hadn’t minded being with her friend again. It had been so easy to fall back into the same rythm as before — as if they had never even been apart.
Elphaba kicked off her shoes and pulled the cover over her head. She hoped the work ahead would be equally painless, but that was tomorrow’s problem.
She fell asleep and dreamed of Butterflies.
The next few days passed in a blur. Elphaba was always being dragged this way or that, and very little seemed to actually be getting done. Glinda insisted it was actually very necessary to attend luncheons and cocktail parties and fundraisers, but Elphaba suspected her friend was also enjoying the chance to parade her around town to see the sights. And she had to admit, it was nice to finally be living in the Emerald City and not need to cram as much of it as possible into one short day.
That being said, she was anxious to get to work. There needed to be comprehensive legislative changes across all of Oz to ratify the rights of Animals everywhere. And word had to be gotten out to those of them that had left Oz to brave what lay beyond! That in itself was a logistical nightmare.
She had certainly been trying her best to get things done, but it wasn’t so simple, it seemed. Despite the Wizard’s almost unilateral power over Oz, there were various councils of representatives from across the land that “needed to feel included in these things”, so it seemed. So the times Elphaba wasn’t spending being dragged to various social engagements, she was mostly sitting at various tables with various committees, taking an absolutely maddening amount of time to decide on even the simplest things. And as soon as anything useful started to happen, it was somehow always time to break for lunch, or tea, or someone had to rush off to another engagement and the whole thing fizzled out. It all felt to Elphaba as a tremendous waste of time.
On the upside, all this busywork was keeing her, well, busy. And since Fiyero had thankfully not been coming along to her and Glinda’s “social engagements”, Elphaba barely saw him these days. She preferred to avoid witnessing too much of their wedded bliss. Of course she was happy for Glinda, she supposed. But it was one thing that her best friend was married to a man she’d once had feelings for and who now loathed her, and quite another to be around them while they canoodled.
Elphaba felt that Glinda could probably do better, actually. She was so gorgeous, and witty. She could probably have just about any man she wanted. And any man would be so, so lucky to have her.