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They’re standing in a cornfield, rage and grief and fear and fury hanging in the air. Glinda doesn’t know what to do, but her greatest strength has always been that she believes the best of everyone, just wants everyone to be happy, and her heart is breaking for her friend. She takes one step forward, then another, then throws herself at Elphaba and hugs her fiercely. Elphaba had been waiting for an attack, had been ready for one, and later she will tell Glinda how close she came to cutting her friend down. But instead she pauses, heart stopping, then hugs her back just as fiercely.
Fiyero watches with half an eye - the other he saves for lookout duty, and all too he sees the distinctive pikes and plumes of the Ozian guard. He and Elphaba escape, leaving Glinda behind, gently and willingly tied to the fence. When the guards find her, she tearfully tells them all about how she confronted the wicked pair, who fled after cruelly (she pushes her bruised wrists in their faces) lashing her to this meager support.
(None of the guards notice that the hand-shaped bruises are too small to have been made by either Elphaba or Fiyero’s hands.)
Elphaba still kidnaps the little farmgirl, and treats her just as roughly as she ever would, but Dorothy dreams of ball gowns and shoes of every color, and wakes to find good food and Toto chewing industriously on a length of knotted rope that’s just the right size for his mouth. She throws water on the Wicked Witch all the same, and runs back to the Wizard eagerly. Glinda teaches her how to use the spell on the shoes, and Dorothy never questions how that spell came to be attached to them.She is sent home, and the wizard too, and Madame Morrible sent to the cellars (the Emerald City never had a true prison, only dank and dusty cellars refitted for the purpose. Glinda thinks she might re-refit them, in time)
There is still much to do, and little daylight to do it in. She decrees an immediate end to cages, and declares that animals are Ozian citizens like any other, and equal under the law (it will take far more than that to reverse decades of diseased thinking, but it’s a start, and as much of one as she is able, today).
Many hours later she returns to her rooms, exhausted and grimy and heartsick beyond belief at all the hurt she has seen that day (though she had known of the terrible things afoot, she had not truly believed, or wanted to believe, until that afternoon, when she had seen things that opened even her privileged eyes). She opens the door to her bedroom and is momentarily stunned to see that her bed is not empty - she reaches blindly for a light, which reveals two figures asleep in her bed, green and brown hands intertwined. Elphaba sits up, blinking against the light, and Glinda blushes and babbles, turning to leave.
“Glinda, wait.”
The words stop her in her tracks, and she looks back, lightning-quick. Fiyero is sitting up too, one hand pushing his hair out of his eyes sleepily.
“Glinda, come to bed,” Elphaba calls sleepily.
And this is all wrong, and not at all the way she imagined it, but it seems to fit, nevertheless. They pull her into bed, ceremonial dress and all, and she wants to tell them that their rough treatment will tear the fabric, but finds herself suddenly too tired to care. They fall asleep that way, the three of them together, with Glinda’s skirts taking up half the bed. The times ahead won’t be easy, and they all know that. They will be hard, and tiring, and they will hurt each other, as lovers are wont to do. But they love each other, no matter what, always and forever, and that’s enough.