Work Text:
Elphaba skulked behind a pillar, gazing upon Glinda and Fiyero as they waltzed centerstage at their engagement ball until they were the only ones left on the dance floor. Belatedly noticing their isolation, the witch ran after the couple as they too departed from the room. But she could not disrupt their happiness. Too, fresh off her fiasco with Nessarose, she did not want to repeat the experience. So, she let the chance to reunite with her old friends slip through her long green fingers.
The Wizard interrupted Elphaba’s attempt to find the flying Monkeys. His spiel was surprisingly like Galinda’s back at Shiz. The pair promised across time to help the brunette craft a false persona that would sway the masses to her side. They pranced around, while she watched with a measure of wry fondness, twisting reality until she almost bought into their beautiful lies.
Elphaba’s rude awakening from the Wizard’s dreamscape came a lot quicker and harsher than from her old friend’s. Dr. Dillamond bleating at her in fear sealed the deal, much like Boq’s cry of dismay upon discovering his new body, Nessarose’s resultant denouncement ringing in green ears much like Madame Morrible’s had. Elphaba had intended to go back and apologize to her sister after shouting at her only to be faced with another betrayal that she again fled from in disgrace.
The witch pledged to fight the Wizard to the death, hers not his, but he called in backup nevertheless.
Fiyero rushed in with the rest of the Wizard’s guard. Surprise turned to joy to confusion, then fear, hurt, and hopelessness; Elphaba’s emotions further ricocheted into relief and delight when the man turned on his master.
Then the so-called Wicked Witch’s fluttering heart burst. A soft voice she knew all too well asked what was going on. Black-booted feet attempted to return to the shadows before ruining yet another life.
But Glinda chased her old roommate and jumped on her in an ardent embrace. “Elphie? Oh! Thank Oz you’re alive!” Protective instincts soon won out over selfish desires once more. “But you shouldn’t have come! If anyone discoverates you-”
Fiyero, like Elphaba, attempted to safeguard the small blonde, telling her to leave before she got further mixed up in the bad situation.
But Glinda’s drive competed with and outpaced her fiancé’s. After a stunned beat, she went to the Wizard and tried to smooth things over, as she so often had for her best friend back in the day.
Until Fiyero screamed Elphaba’s name, making Glinda scream his.
A tense moment passed before the man decided, “I’m going with her!”
“What?” the two witches asked one after the other.
Elphaba’s mind immediately whirred with all the ways things could go wrong, an uncertain future, while Glinda mind torpidly brought up flashes of times when things had gone wrong, the fraught past.
Realizing that Fiyero had joined the military and so rapidly rose in rank not to match her status of Grand Vizier but to find their old friend. Every time he leapt up, even in the middle of the night or being indisposed with Glinda, at the smallest, vaguest mentions of someone having sighted the Wicked Witch. Disappearing for days or even weeks at a time in fervent search for her. Calling out her name in his sleep. Defending her to the crowd directly after the announcement of his engagement.
Too, she saw herself declining Elphaba’s invitation to go on the run her. At first trying to ameliorate the hate and hysteria against her friend until finally conceding a lost cause and going along with the crowd and her superiors. Not only not defending Elphaba but slandering her as well. Refusing to leave the farce behind, despite her reluctant fiancé’s passionate appeal.
Most prominent came the feelings of always being second-best, a consolation prize. To Madame Morrible, the Wizard, Nessarose, and finally Fiyero. She had lost, nay, abandoned, her only chances to be first without even realizing it.
And so, there she stood, watching Elphaba retreat from her a second time. With the older woman went all Glinda’s remaining hope and goodness. Not long after, she turned to Madame Morrible and offered her old tormentor a solution she never would have thought of herself. “Her sister. Use her sister.”
Thus, she signed a death warrant not her own, Fiyero’s, or even Elphaba’s. But that of the one person she had promised her best friend to look after in that friend’s forced absence.
Glinda fled in shame and defeat, following her great loves too late.