I'd like to apologize in advance for the pain this may cause you, fellow Ozians, to read. I realized that if you listen to No One Mourns the Wicked from Glinda's perspective... it's actually a really, really sad song. What makes it worse... she would have been going through that over and over. All. Day. All over Oz.
I swear I do have nice Wicked fics rolling around in my head I just rarely actually write them XD
One mourns the wicked yet.
(I suggest reading this all as spoken until the last chorus of "no one mourns the wicked," at which point singing it in your head makes it hit home a lot harder. But that's just my advice.)
Word Count: 1,065
They were singing about it. Singing. And cheering, and dancing, and celebrating. She should have expected it, but it still hurt. And worst of all, she was expected to take part. To make speeches about how good it was. All. Over. Oz.
She was just about ready to fly off solo herself.
But, of course, she couldn't. For the time being, she had to smile, and make nice, and pretend she didn't want to strangle every single person who had ever voiced a word against her best friend. It was torture, but she would manage. She had to. She'd promised Elphie as much.
"Good news!"
Oh, no.
"She's dead!"
One more, Glinda. One more. Then you can go home and lock yourself in your room and cry as long as you want. But as the voices grew steadily louder, her conviction grew steadily weaker.
"The Witch of the West is dead! The wickedest witch there ever was, the enemy of all of us here in Oz is dead! Good news! Good news!"
"Look!" someone cried as she descended. "It's Glinda!"
He sounded so happy, so thrillified to see her. He must think she was happy too. He couldn't possibly imagine how much it hurt her to hear all this. And she wouldn't correct him. She'd promised. "It's good to see me, isn't it?" she trilled, slipping on the familiar persona of Glinda the Good. The crowd cheered, and she smiled, holding up a hand to quiet them. "No need to respond. That was rhetorical." Everyone laughed, and she had to wait a moment, both to let them quiet enough so she could be heard and to gather her thoughts so she wouldn't shatter at what she had to say next.
"Fellow Ozians, let us be glad. Let us be grateful! Let us rejoicify that goodness could subdue the wicked workings of..." She hesitated, finding herself unable to say the Wicked Witch. "You-know-who," she covered, hoping they would simply put it up to the old superstition of not saying evil's name. "Isn't it nice to know that good will conquer evil? That the truth we all believe will, by and by outlive a lie - for you and -"
Someone cut her off. "Glinda!"
She stuttered, caught off guard. "Yes?"
He hesitated. "Just how dead is she?"
Glinda flinched, but hopefully no one could see from her place up in the air. "According to the Time Dragon clock," she said slowly, "the Witch was... melted at the thirteenth hour, as a direct result of a bucket of water thrown by a female child. Yes, the Witch of the West..." She paused, gulping, choking the words out. "Is dead."
Cheers erupted. People shouted over the hubbub.
"No one mourns the wicked!" One does.
"No one cries, 'They won't return!" Only in joy.
"No one lays a lily on their grave!" There is no grave, she thought quietly. Only a hat left standing on its own in a castle.
"The good man scorns the wicked!"
"Through their lives, our children learn what we miss when we misbehave!"
She couldn't take it anymore. Trying to temper the crowd's fervor, she raised her voice, "And goodness knows," she reminded them, "the wicked's lives are lonely! Goodness knows, the wicked die alone." So you think. "It just shows, when you're wicked, you're left only on your own..." She trailed off, remembering the words of her artichoke. "And if I'm flying solo..."
It didn't matter; they had drowned anything she might have said out again. "Yes, goodness knows the wicked's lives are lonely! Goodness knows the wicked cry alone!" Elphaba certainly never cried in front of anyone. "Nothing grows for the wicked, they reap only what they've sown!"
Someone managed to raise their voice enough to be heard over the crowd again. "Glinda! How does wickedness happen?"
How, indeed. She smiled faintly. "That's a very good question," she admitted, "one many people find confusifying. Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness... thrust upon them?" "To those who'd ground me..." "After all, she had a father. She had a mother, as so many do."
Thoughts of them absorbed her for a moment. Frexspar, who had never loved Elphaba. Melena, who had loved her, but who she'd had only for so short a time.
And, of course, her real father.
"And, like every family... they had their secrets." Melena, who had loved another. Frex, who had never known.
And their daughter...
"And, of course, from the moment she was born, she was... well..." She hesitated, then murmured helplessly, "Different."
Looking at things a different way.
She remembered what Elphaba had told her about her own birth, what she knew from her father, and imagined the scene.
"It's coming!"
Frex spun to look at the Antelope in shock. "What - now?"
"The baby's coming," she confirmed.
"And how?" he cried, rushing to Melena's side. "I see a nose!"
"I see a curl!" the Antelope agreed.
"It's a healthy, perfect, lovely little -"
The midwife's scream. Frex's cry. "Sweet Oz!"
Melena's distress. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"How can it be?" the Antelope fretted.
"What does it mean?" Frex asked fearfully.
"It's atrocious!"
"It's obscene!"
"Like a froggy, ferny cabbage, the baby is unnaturally - green!"
The Antelope hesitantly hushed the unnaturally quiet babe. Held her out to her father, but -
"Take it away."
"But, sir -" the Antelope started quietly, trying again.
"Take IT away!" he snarled.
Glinda remembered where she was. "So, you see," she cried, "it couldn't have been easy!"
But she was, once again, drowned out.
"No one mourns the wicked!" shouted the crowd. "Now, at last! she's dead and gone! Now at last, there's joy throughout the land! And goodness knows we know what goodness is!"
Ha.
"Goodness knows, the wicked die alone!"
"She died alone," Glinda agreed, half to herself, the only person who could understand the bitter irony - No. She didn't.
"Woe to those who spurn what goodnesses they are shown!"
What goodnesses was she ever shown?
"No one mourns the wicked!"
Good news.
"No one mourns the wicked!"
Good. News.
"No one mourns the wicked!"
No...
"Wicked!"
Oh, Elphie!
"WICKED!"
Reviews, please! Thank you for reading, and I'll see y'all next time.
...assuming the pitchforks don't catch me first, that is.