Title: Three Seconds
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs to Universal Studios, and the Gregory Maguire.
Setting: Musicalverse

Three Seconds

"Well, are you coming?"

Don't ask me that Elphie, the traitorous voice in Glinda's head said even as her heart broke at the desperate plea in her friends voice. Please don't ask me to come with you. It's one thing for you to reject the Wizard, you've spent your whole life being shunned. You can handle being shunned again, even being called Wicked. I... I'm not that strong.

All her life Glinda had coasted by without ever having to truly face a difficult decision. Her parents had made them when she was younger, and as she grew up she found that she was very good at getting her own way, using her charm, or her money or her looks to get what she wanted without trouble. But there was no easy answer here. Elphaba had already rejected the one choice she had wanted, which was to apologise and make amends.

And she couldn't even be angry at that, because Elphaba had a point. What the Wizard was doing was wrong, but he was the Wonderfull Wizard for Oz' sake. And she and Elphaba were college-girls, surely they couldn't be expected to challenge the Wizard himself when the entire nation worshipped everything he said and did. Two girls, barely trained in magic without a single resource between them except for Elphaba's broom and the Grimmerie couldn't achieve anything meaningful, so why throw away everything for the sake of a gesture.

Except...

Except Elphie doesn't believe that's true. She realised with a start, as green eyes bored into her blue ones. Elphie is ready to defy the Wizard, with everything she has. She knows that she could lose, that she'll probably lose, but she's going to do it anyway.

She didn't understand what the point was of fighting when there was no chance of winning. To throw away everything, her reputation, her friends and family, her status, for nothing wasn't something Glinda could do. How could she look her friends and family in the eye and admit to them that she threw away everything for a futile gesture.

How could she look Elphie in the eye and tell her that what she was doing was futile.

Was it possible that she was wrong, she wondered. Could Elphie really be that sure that they could make a difference, that the two of them, maybe three if Fiyero could be convinced to join them, could actually achieve something other than a messy death.

Glinda was truly scared for the first time in her life, as visions of the future swam before her eyes. Untill she'd actually thought about it, she hadn't really considered that the Wizard might just kill Elphie if she defied him. And yet, she was still going to go. Elphie's own life didn't mean as much to her as her principles did. It was something Glinda had never had in her entire life, a conviction so strong that it was worth fighting for, worth dying for.

A phrase from one of her daddy's books came to her unbidden. All that is necesarry for evil to win, is for good Ozians to do nothing. Glinda blinked, as for the first time in her life, she truly felt like she understood what that meant. And it gave her insight into her green friend that she had never had before. No matter what the cause, Elphaba Thropp could never be the one who did nothing.

It was integral to everything she was that when no one else would stand up for a cause. It was the source of all the contradictions in her friend, the inevitable and inescapable conclusion that if no one else would stand up, then she would, because someone had to do...something.

And in that realisation, Glinda knew the answer to Elphaba's question.

"Elphie," she whispered, and the green girls face fell at the tone of her voice, and she turned to start shoving the Grimmerie back in her bag. But the green girl never made it all way, as Glinda's arm shot out like a striking snake, and her hand came to rest on the other girls arm.

"Elphie," she said again, her voice stronger now, and her face broke into a grin even as she heard the battering ram smash into the door behind her. "You and I, let's defy gravity, together."

And in those three seconds, the course of Ozian history changed.

- finis -