Work Text:
Despite the ache in her back and her bones, Glinda is practically skipping as she hurries her way through the back alleys of Southstairs. Stolen from her cell in the middle of the night, pulled through the labyrinthine pathways by bony, thin fingers clamped like a vice around her wrist, Glinda takes to her only choice - forward, out, away - with gusto. Her heart is hummingbird fast in her chest, and not just from the exercise of running; she is giddy, trembling with fear and excitement and the hideous squelch of her thin shoes in puddles of dank moss growing along the natural formations of cold, unyielding rock. Cell doors whiz past, the woman leading her swift, refusing to look back with no patience or nonsense to spare. Glinda wants to stutter her frustration, her joy, her loathing and her thanks, though that wicked name that came so easily before lodges in her throat with a misplaced grief. She can only think in labels, in the mystery of the miles ahead of them, of her taker, her leader, her -
"Saviour!" the woman wresting her forward barks, when Glinda finally finds the word for her partner in getaway. Face hidden, wreathed in the black cloak of scarves and midnight, she tilts her head to the ceilings, a cackle loosing itself from the grinning slit of her mouth. Glinda's heart stutters and the shrill, full-chested sound, relishing as it echoes off the rock walls of the damned fortress, a gift to hear such vile glee ringing in her ears and not just in memory. "I have no such pure intentions, pretty thing," she crows. She does not look back as she says this; Glinda hears the mirth and mischief that must warp her sharp features. "Don't you know, I'm your captor, of course. Your abductor."
"A kidnapper," Glinda muses, out of breath and smiling so wide her cheeks hurt; it's been so long since she's needed to flash a smile to the public, much longer still one came to her so genuinely, so easily. "And for what nefarious purpose would you kidnap an old, washed-up thing like me?" Despite herself, Glinda giggles. If she knew being kidnapped would be so much fun, she would have fired Sir Chuffrey's security years ago. "Ransom? Torture?"
"Nothing so tame," her abductor growls between her teeth. It sounds like a purr, turning Glinda's arthritic knees to jelly like a kiss whispered behind her ear. "You'll see, in due time."
"More time, more waiting," Glinda pants, exasperated, though soon the vice around her wrist lets up, letting her slow her pace. When she looks up, she notices quite belatedly that the prison has opened up above them - a gaping maw, the sharp rocky crags of its rim like teeth framing the night sky, awaiting the falling stars to sink into its devouring gullet. And oh, the stars, how they take Glinda's breath away again even as she tries to gain it back from the rush, the adrenaline of escape and pursuit. Not that she hasn't seen them since her incarceration - her jailers were more than willing to grant her rightful privileges, to escort her through the winding slum villages of the prison's gen pop when she was in the mood to stretch her legs. Tonight though, they are brighter, even if only by her mind's making. Tonight, they have never felt so close.
She doesn't realize how hard she is shivering until, in a whirl of black and green, her shoulders are laden with weight and warmth. Her keeper, her thief - her liberator, her hero - turns to her, nimble fingers securing the proffered cape deftly around her bare shoulders, where Glinda had not so much as grabbed a cardigan to protect herself from the chill. There is no question to it, no argument as she lifts her leg over to straddle their shared mount. It is a gift freely given. She lets herself be draped in the folds of soft, worn leather, lets the woollen lining scratch comfortingly against her skin, drowning in the scent of herbs and ozone. Her little pale head, her curls more grey than gold, pops up starkly against its blackness like a pinprick in velvet, like a comet streaking against the sky; she looks of a bat in the pantry, fallen from its roost and landed head first into the milk jug.
"Nothing of the sort," the woman tells her, soft against the whistling wind gusting down from the city above. "To stretch your patience further is more criminal than even I could bear." She steps in front of Glinda, back flush against her front. "You've waited long enough, my sweet. Now hold on."
Glinda has only a moment to wind her arms around the skinny waist in front of her, and then her slippered feet are lifted from the dirty stone and concrete, the avenues and arteries of adjoining cell blocks and jailhouse commerce shrinking beneath her in seconds, a vast city now a mere map, now an minuscule system of venous paths, before disappearing from her view entirely. It is replaced by the rolling gridlock of city lights, millions of windows alight with yellow gold against the steeples and spires of wrecked emerald and steel. Glinda could reach out and graze them, risk amputating her fingertips as they weave through their gaps. The air whistles between their bodies and shattered rubble as they glide over the metal surface of the Emerald City's urban ocean, nothing but the flutter of torn flags and vanishing laughter left in their wake. Can the citizens milling about their after-dark escapades see them, woven together in their flight? Do they recognize her, former governor, beloved traitor, her fall from grace now a soaring sight - and in her ragged jailhouse greys, her hair whipping and unkempt, wrapped in black that unfurls around the two of them like vulture's wings, what a terrible sight they must be! Can they hear her shrieking against the wind with glee, two cackles in tune like an old crone, like a true witch?
She cannot see if the circus of nightlife below them stare up in awe or in horror, or if they even look up at all - her glasses broke a year ago, and even if they could crystallize the shocked faces of the city so far down, she does not need them. Not anymore, because she does not look down to check. She does not look up to the heavens, either, does not even look forward to the lakes or the mountains or the east or the west, whatever their heading, wherever they go into Oz or beyond it. Instead, Glinda squeezes her love close, her face buried into the nape of her neck, into thick hair more silver than black, relishing the gift of its age, of its aging, of their aging together. She does not care where she is taken, she does not care where they land. She only lets the wind and the tears in her eyes sting against her cheeks, and holds tight and selfish to the things she loves. They can make their plans later. They can take their own sweet time.