Disclaimed.
A bell sounded over the hill, and a flock of birds took flight above their heads. There was a cold rain drizzling down, prickling the back of Glinda's neck as she stood, weak-kneed, in front of the hard-wood casket. Her small hands gripped a bouquet that she had made up herself that morning- lilies, for sweetness, pink roses, for friendship, orange roses, for everlasting love, and babies' breath, for innocence. The crowd was thin as bone and silent, the only tears running were Glinda's own. Nanny sat in a wheel-chair beside her, staring down at the lid of the coffin and Frex stood alone, some distance from the rest, ever-stubborn in his prayers. And across the hole in the earth, across from the casket that held Elphie, her Elphie, waited Fiyero. His eyes, as were everyone else's, were locked on the body. Or what they knew was the body, beneath the surface of that awful polished wood. Glinda's blood boiled at the sight of him, and angry tears mixed with those of grief. She threw her flowers fitfully into the pit and glared at the scarecrow.
"You did this to her. It's your fault she's gone. If she'd stayed, if she'd listened to me and cleared her name, she would still be here. You killed her, Fiyero. You killed her."
He shook his head at her. "She never loved you Glinda. We all know that's what this is about. She never loved you."
His words stung like flesh wounds, but she held in her tears. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Not when he'd already taken so much from her.
"You bastard." She whispered, hate in her eyes. "You selfish bastard. Can't you see what you've done?"
"She died as she would have been proud to. She died fighting the Wizard's forces, fighting to the last."
Glinda felt like screaming and running and strangling him all at once. "SHE DIDN'T WANT TO DIE AT ALL!"
He looked at her with something like pity. "Go home, Glinda. Go back to your little luncheons and parties and teas. Go back to that oblivious sod of a husband of yours. You have no more business here, and the rest of us would prefer to mourn without your childish accusations."
"I have no business here?! Who was it, Fiyero, who funded her missions? Who was it who allowed you two- though it broke my very being- to escape in the end? Who took the child into care, when yours and Elph-" she sobbed, unable to say the name, "When your and her life became too dangerous for him?" She cleared her voice, and held his gaze. "No, Fiyero, it is you who have no more business here."
He laughed without humour. "So after all these years, after adulthood has matured the rest of us, you are still so petty? She didn't even remember you in the end, Glinda. She loved me. She chose me." He looked up from the casket. "She could have gone back to you whenever she wanted. But she didn't. Because she didn't want to."
Glinda fell to her knees, dirt all up the front of her plain white frock. She pulled her hair with grief, blonde curls falling haphazardly out of their arrangement.
"Always making a scene whenever things don't go your way? And you wonder why she left." He looked down at her, still shaking his head in that infuriatingly patronising way.
Nanny wheeled over to them, senile in her old age and blind in one eye. "Just shut up, both of you!" she turned to Fiyero. "You call her selfish, but you spend the entire funeral, not mourning for Elphaba, but gloating about how she chose you. And you," she rounded on Glinda, "show up out of nowhere, after ten years of silence, acting as though you're the only one to feel the pain of her passing."
She wheeled slowly around to face the grave. "She deserves the respect of silence, and the love of both of you. She didn't have it in life, so at least honour her with peace in death."
And the western wind blew.
Bit 'o angst in the morning :) R&R