Oh my Oz, you guys! I've been on fanfiction for a year! A whole year! 366 days! 8,784 hours! 527,040 minutes! 31,622,400 seconds! (This year has been a leap year, so I guess I've technically had to wait one day extra. How unfair is that?). I certainly can't believe it! I know that I took a very long hiatus after Christmas, but I've tried to stay active since. I want to thank everyone who's supported me this far. You guys are great!

It had been two years since Glinda the Good lost the only friend she'd ever had that mattered. But it seemed like it had been an eternity ago. Every day without her, before her death, had of course dragged on, but nothing could have prepared her for how slow each day went by knowing that you would never again see your best friend. Every day since, minutes ticked by like days and hours ticked on like years. By the time she finally lay her head on her pillow at night, she had to think extra hard to remember what she had done earlier that day. It was like trying to recall a memory that had happened so many years ago, when more important things had happened since. Only the "more important things that had happened since" just happened to have happened years before the memories she was trying to recall. So when she tried to remember what she'd had for breakfast that morning, she thought of the time that she had tried to convince Elphaba to use her training in sorcery to poof up a meal for them one morning. When she tried to remember if she had already set out an outfit for the next day, she thought of the time that she had replaced everything in the green girl's entire wardrobe with more colorful clothing items. It was a never-ending cycle of trying to distract herself from the pain of being alone by doing things in the day, which she would then try to recall at night while laying in her bed, which would then bring up memories of her bestest friend, which would remind her how much she missed Elphie, which would make her feel even more lonely,which would then make her try to distract herself from the pain of being alone by doing things during the day. It was bad enough on a normal day, but the anniversary of her bestest friend's death was always ten times worse.

Looking out her window, the blonde shook her head sadly. So many people were outside celebrating the death of a woman that most of them had never even seen with their own eyes. It made Glinda feel sick to her stomach to see how happy they were. If only I hadn't made that promise to her. Then I could have cleared her name. Maybe then I wouldn't be the only one mourning. She deserves more. There should be people all over Oz lighting candles in her honor, remembering all of the good things she fought for, not lighting candles to illuminate the streets where celebrations of her death are being held.

The staff at the Emerald City Palace knew very well not to disturb her on the anniversary, so she didn't worry about anybody walking in on her as she pulled a small box out from under her bed and unlocked it with a magical spell. Pulling the lid off slowly, she gently ran a pale, perfectly-manicured finger over its contents. Pictures. Pictures from the better days when she and Elphie were together. When she had first come to the palace, she had spent hours trying to find the perfect spell to ensure that nobody, not even Morrible, could get it open except for her. She didn't look at the pictures often, as she still feared that somebody would walk in on her and use the fact that she had pictures of her and The Wicked Witch of the West as friends against her. Power in Oz was the last thing she had left to cling to. She couldn't lose that, too. She gently lifted the stack of pictures and placed it next to her on her bed, ready to look at them all one by one. Each photo had a brief summary or caption beneath it, written in either Elphaba or Galinda's handwriting.

The first picture was of them both sitting by a fountain at a park that was near Shiz. Elphaba had a book in her hands, but had paused her reading to look up and give whoever was taking the picture a small smile. Galinda, of course, had tossed her hair and gave the camera a fabulous smile. Elphie and Glin at the park.

The second picture was of the both of them, along with Nessa, sitting by a lake. They each had pieces of bread in their hands, and the ducks they had been feeding swam peacefully in the background of the shot. Galinda smiled her usual glamorous smile, while Elphaba and Nessa kept the smiles on their faces small, though it was obvious that all three were enjoying themselves. Feeding the ducks with Nessa.

The next few always made Galinda smile. There were eight of them, each of a different duck. That wasn't what made her smile, though. It was the captions that her green friend had written at the bottom. One of the ducks we fed at the lake. Galinda named this duck Pip when we went with Nessa to feed the ducks at the lake. This duck refused to eat bread from Galinda or me, and only ate the bread that Nessa threw out. This duck made a noise at Galinda when she got to close and Galinda nearly fell in the lake, it scared her so badly. A duck at the lake. Another duck at the lake. Another duck. Galinda took way too many duck pictures.

The next picture was of them in the library with a bunch of books spread out on the table in front of them. Unlike most of the pictures in the pile, it was a candid shot, and neither Galinda nor Elphaba had known that the picture was being taken until after. It was one of Glinda's personal favorites in the stack. In it, Elphaba was pointing to a certain line in the book that they were looking at, as she had been attempting to tutor the blonde in science. Trying to explain to Galinda the difference between chromosomes and chromatids.

The next picture in the stack had been taken a few days after the blonde's first attempt to make her friend popular and featured-

The blonde was pulled out of her fantasies by a cautious knock at her door. Mumbling under her breath about how had it was to get privacy there and all of the creative ways she was thinking of to punish whoever was interrupting her on this very, very hard day, she carefully put the photos in the box and sealed it with the spell before pushing it beneath her bed and shuffling to the door. Swinging it open harshly, she made sure to show her annoyance in the glare that she fixed on the maid who had dared interrupt her on this day. The poor girl cowered beneath the angry blonde, afraid to speak.

"What?" Glinda asked, still not softening her glare any.

"Y-you h-ave some-somebody h-here," the poor maid stuttered so helplessly that Glinda would want to give her a reassuring hug if she wasn't so emotional over her friend's loss, "a-and I was t-told t-to come and g-get you im-immediately. It is s-supposedly v-very im-important." Glinda huffed and stopped glaring at the girl, though she still didn't appreciate being interrupted from her looking at pictures.

"Who is it and what do they want?" She asked. If it was so urgent, she'd like to at least know what she was about to deal with.

"I'm n-not sure ex-exactly, but I did hear th-that it's one of the p-people who aided the young girl in k-killing the Wicked w-witch. I w-would assume that their arrival has something to do with the anniversary of the Witch's death." The maid continued, her nervous stutter beginning to subside a bit.

"I'm on my way." Glinda said. This would be good. She was going to get her well-manicured hands around the throats of one of the monsters who had killed her Elphie. While that certainly wouldn't avenge her friends death in any way, killing one of her killers wouldn't do that either, it would certainly make the blonde feel better for a bit. As she made her way down countless hallways and flights of stairs, she practiced what she was going to say in her head. She couldn't be too harsh, but maybe she could get a good punch on him or give him a well-deserved kick in the shin. This was possibly her only chance to punish one of her friend's murderers, and she wasn't going to waste it with a few words. She had it all planned out, but it all left her mind when she turned the corner. Standing there was the scarecrow, one of the ones who had been sent to kill her friend and succeeded.

Well? She thought. Don't just stand there! Yell at him, kick him, punch him, make him pay! Heck, pull out a match and watch him burn or push him into the fireplace! Do something! Don't just stand there! But standing there was all she could do when she looked into his eyes. Because she had seen those eyes before. She had looked into them so many times. But where?

"Glinda, can we maybe talk somewhere private?" The scarecrow asked. Wow. Way to go with the plan! He thought to himself. All you had to do was try to get her to trust you first, but no! You're too brainless to do that, apparently. Great job. He was so busy beating himself up inside that he almost didn't notice the blonde nod. It surprised him, in all honesty. He had been expecting for her to pull out a match and watch him burn. After all, all she knew was that he was part of the group that had "killed" her best friend. But he wasn't the only one surprised.

Really? Really? Glinda thought. Here's your chance to get some good punches in on one of the people who helped kill your bestest friend, and you're taking him to go talk somewhere private? Stupid, ditzy blonde. Well, maybe I can burn him in a closet and leave the ashes there so that nobody ever finds them. But she didn't take him to a closet. Instead, she found herself turning into her large suite. Closing the door behind her, she looked him in the eyes again. What was so familiar about those eyes?

"What do you want?" She asked. She had tried to sound intimidating, but she was fairly certain that she had sounded more weak and hurt than anything. And was it just her, or did the scarecrow actually wince when he heard the pain in her voice?

"Look, Glinda, umm..." he paused for a moment, and the blonde impatiently tapped her foot, secretly waiting for him to take his guard down so she could punch him hard, "there's no easy way to tell you this, and I guess actions speak louder than words, so I'll just let you see for yourself." He said, pulling a small hand mirror out of his pocket and handing it to her. Giving the scarecrow a suspicious look, she allowed herself to look at the mirror. At first, she just saw her reflection, but then she noticed that the mirror looked exactly like one that Elphie had given her years ago, and she began to think of her friend again.

She was ready to push aside the thought of her green friend and ask the scarecrow why he had dared waste her time, when her reflection began to swirl in the mirror. It kept swirling until it showed no more of the blonde and rather a magnificent burst of color that slowly shaded from magnificent pinks and yellows to elegant greens and mysterious blacks until an image began to form, and Glinda nearly dropped the mirror when the image stopped swirling and clearly became that of her friend. She tried to think of a memory when Elphie looked like that, thinking that it was showing whatever memory she was thinking of, but noticed that Elphaba in the image looked different than she had ever seen her. And where was she? And why was she looking straight at her through the mirror.

"Glin?" Glinda actually did drop the mirror this time at hearing her friend's voice again after all this time, and it fell into her lap, where it stayed for a moment before the blonde picked it up and stared at it.

"No. No- that's not possible. Y-you're dead" She stammered to the image in the mirror. "He was one of the ones who killed you!" She exclaimed, pointing to the scarecrow sitting across from her on one of her sofas.

"Glin, that's just what... what we wanted everyone to think." Came the voice from the mirror. It sounded so much like Elphaba, but it couldn't be. Elphaba was dead. She had died two years ago. "And I am so, so sorry that we didn't tell you earlier, by we had to make sure it was safe."

"We?"

"Yes, we. Me a-and Fiyero." Said the image in the mirror, a mirror that was dropped for the second time that night.

"But that's not possible! Fiyero is dead! You are dead!" Fiyero was as dead as Elphaba was, and had been for two years. But looking up and meeting the scarecrow's eyes again, she could barely breath, barely think. That was where she had seen those eyes before. It made sense now. Buy it didn't.

"B-but how is that possible?" She managed to stammer after what felt like an eternity of silence, though it probably had only been a few seconds.

"W-we faked our deaths. Well, I did. I mean, you were the only person that I actually told that Fiyero died, but I-"

"So you lied to me." The blonde interrupted.

Elphaba had been prepared for Glinda to start crying tears of joy and exclaiming about how happy she was to have her Elphie back, and it showed in her face as she opened her mouth, closed it, and owned it again, though no sound came out.

"You said that he was dead. You made all of Oz think that you were dead, but you didn't even bother to tell me? Would it have been so hard to have left a note?" She exclaimed. "I have spent the past two years blaming myself for what happened to you, and you've been...well, wherever you are, perfectly fine and alive! Do you know how hard it's been? I've- I just... I've missed you!" And she began to cry. Even Glinda didn't know whether they were tears of joy or anger or sadness. She felt the scarecrow-no, Fiyero- move to the sofa she was on and put his arms around her as she cried.

"I'm so, so sorry, Glin." He said after a bit, and she looked up at him. That was why he had winced when he heard the pain in her voice earlier. He felt bad. He blamed himself for the pain she was in. Elphaba probably blamed herself, too.

"H-how did you, you know, become a-" she didn't finish her sentence, just gestured toward his body because she couldn't speak through her sobs.

"I did it." Elphaba said. "Not on purpose, the first time, at least."

"The first time? You did this twice?"

"Well, once to save him after the Gale Force caught him. But then I changed him back after we left. The only way to get this mirror to you, though, was for one of us to give you it personally. So I changed him back because everyone knows him as the scarecrow who helped... whatever the little farm brat's name was."

Glinda smiled softly, feeling no more tears falling down her face.

"To use the mirror," Elphaba explained, "you just have to think about me. Or I can think about you. Either way, it'll work, and we'll be able to talk to each other whenever."

"But what if someone discoveries it?"

"It only works when you think of me. That's another reason it took so long to get it to you, I had to perfect the enchantment so that it was completely safe. To everyone else, it's just a mirror." The green girl explained.

"Oh, Elphie," Glinda began, "you have no idea how much I have missed you. Thinking you were dead was, well, the worst thing that's ever happened to me." She saw the green girl wince a bit at that, probably feeling bad for making her friend feel that way, so the blonde quickly corrected herself. "But I can talk to you now. Whenever you want. Whenever I want. It will be like being together again. Well, not exactly, but at least it will be better than never seeing each other ever " The blonde smiled. Her optimism was returning already. And she was no longer stuck feeling sorry for herself, for her friends, because they were with her. One literally, the other a bit figuratively. And though Fiyero would leave soon, she was sure that she'd also see him through the mirror once he returned to wherever Elphie was. And for the first time in years, the blonde could say that she couldn't be happier and actually mean it.

So please tell me what you think, and be honest. I know that I haven't been the best at updating and all, so I really do appreciate everyone that's stuck with me this far! I mean, you guys are the reason that my fic got two Greg Awards, and I am just so grateful to all of you for making this an awesome year on fanfiction! So virtual cake and ice cream and party hats (with confetti) to anyone who reviews! (And I'll give you all a virtual cupcake just for reading because I'm so nice like that!)

Love you all! Let's raise our virtual glasses to an awesome year and more to come!