Disclaimer: I don't own Wicked. That would be Gregory Maguire, lucky bastard.

Before

"Do you know anything about yourself, at all?"

Quiet words that went with deep stares and a faint, electrical current that joined the girls from across the room.

"Do you?"

Galinda had turned and left the dorm, blushing with a righteous anger that she couldn't source. How dare she question Galinda, as though it was Galinda who should be unsure of herself. Galinda had money and looks and a dozen friends and boys hanging on her side, the perfect encapsulation of privilege and a powerful understanding of society. And the green bean wanted to plant a seed of doubt in her mind! The audacity of it, really.

Galinda stepped roughly into the courtyard and sat down amongst the cabbages, chill air fresh against her bare arms. It was too late to go back to fetch a shawl, and besides, Galinda felt she might explode if she had to look at Elphaba's snide face again, with all its angles and haughtiness.

She kicked at the green stem of some plant, satisfied at the crunch it made as the stalk snapped in two. She imagined that the plant was one of Elphaba's limbs. Maybe her arm, with that thin line of muscle running along the inside, the one that Galinda stared at in the dark of the night as it hung over the side of Elphaba's bed. Or maybe a leg, with its taunt green calve and pin-prick knee. Her hollow stomach, inhuman, or the quick arch of her neck, that looked like it would be so soft against a pair of pink lips, or…

Drat.

"Do you know yourself, at all?" she'd said. What did she mean, did she know herself? Galinda gripped her shoulders for warmth and took notice of their width, the feel of her skin. She was quite permanently present, that was for certain. She was Galinda Upland, seventeen, well-off socialite attending Shiz University. Paired with an unspeakable roommate, fond of parties and baths that steamed so hot it was agony to dip her toes into them. It was simple. She was beautiful. What more would she need to know?

But there was something in Elphaba's voice as she asked the question, an ugly urgency that suggested that Galinda was blind to something important, as though there were a shadow dousing her sun that she could not see. As though she was shaded in gloomy light and did not know any better.

Galinda felt the sweep of a cold sweat. Her stomach turned.

Was it the easy affection she gave to Elphaba that made the green girl think she… Was that what she meant? It was just a stupid kiss, really. She'd almost forgotten until now. She'd come home late from that dance, the one that was so disappointing but served some amazing new drink that tasted like pure happiness and bubbled excitedly against her lips. She'd arrived back after pushing away boys all night, explaining wearily that her feet were too sore to dance, that a real lady simply sat and smiled at events like these. Elphaba had sat up blearily as Galinda walked into the room and hardly had the chance to ask what time it was before Galinda had crawled onto her sheets and curled up close to the green girl, in a sleepy haze of drunkenness that simply said, I don't care who you are, just hold me.

Galinda was almost absurdly appreciative for the darkness of the evening, the late hour, the solitude. Somewhere above her she saw the dimming of a lamp and imagined she heard the sigh Elphaba made as she slipped beneath her covers, left hand still gripped to some bound volume, sharp eyes finally at rest.

Do you know yourself, at all?

Elphaba hadn't asked what she was doing, or why Galinda didn't turn on the light when she came in. She lay carefully still like a deer caught in the paws of a lion, barely daring to breathe but not altogether terrified.

"Good party?" she'd asked eventually, her whispering voice like a gunshot against the silence. Galinda had looked up at her, and Elphaba saw with a jolt that there was the silver of tears on her cheeks.

"I hate them, Elphie. I… I hate them."

Then she'd lifted her lips to Elphaba's mouth and pressed them lightly together. Elphaba remembered the burn of Galinda's tears against her skin. There were no sparks, the world did not crumble. It was simply a kiss, soft and comfortable, almost childish. Galinda had slipped away from Elphaba after and disappeared into the shadow of the room. She was gone the next morning, before Elphaba had even opened her eyes to the first light.

…at all?

During

Glinda was surrounded by a powdery smell, it filled her lungs. She was uncomfortably hot, her heart beat faster than it had ever done, and half of her mind screamed that she ought to leave immediately, that she'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.

"You're a sweet little thing, aren't ya?"

The woman before her was all heady sent and rouge. Her bright curls looked steely rather than soft. She was the kind of woman you were free to find desirable, but you knew she would happily beat you to death if she found she had to.

"What're ya doing here, lovely? A pretty gal like you ought to be out with 'er boyfriend, I should think." She looked at Glinda kindly. She was at least fifteen years older than the blonde. She could be her mother, at a stretch.

Glinda sat down awkwardly on the bed. She noted with a shudder the sweet smell that rose off it, as though it had been hastily sprayed with perfume to mask some other, guilty scent.

"Do you want me to take my clothes off?" she spoke carefully, willing herself to sound as though she knew what she was doing.

The woman sighed and began unbuttoning her own blouse. "Well, deary, if that's what you want. You're the payin' customer, right?"

Glinda shrugged out of her dress and lay upon the bed. Despite herself, she felt warmth between her thighs as the woman- stripped bare to underwear grotesquely decorated with red ribbon- climbed atop her. She reached up to join their lips but the woman quickly stopped her. "We don' do kissing here, love. We do everythin' else, though."

After, as Glinda found herself back on the dingy street, she wondered why the woman would taste her very insides, would make her moan, would show her every inch of her body, and yet wouldn't kiss her. Maybe the kiss was all Glinda had wanted, after all. It was the ghost of another kiss she was looking for. The sex had made her feel good. The abandon that came with it still flowed through Glinda's veins. She considered walking into one of the innumerable bars that lined the street. She heard laughter echoing from them and she suddenly wanted nothing more than alcohol in her system, a deep, stiff drink to release her from the emotion that threated to consume. She could feel it, see the signs- that tightening of the throat, the welling of tears that came before she started missing her.

And god did she miss her.

Elphaba had fallen away as easily as a strand of hair cut off at the root. The severed tie was clean. Glinda could go on with her life the way it was supposed to have been before she met that green anomaly who ruined everything.

And now where was she? Shivering on the cool corner of a street she didn't even want to know the name of, paying for sex with women because in her ordinary life she couldn't bear to look for actual pleasure. There was the promise of a marriage after Shiz, children, a dowdy husband who might treat her well and might not- but no pleasure. It was simply duty. Glinda knew resolutely that this was what she wanted, the soft flesh of women, but she knew with just as much resolve that it was not possible. She heard whisperings of women who lived together in the city, an eccentric, outcast bunch… But their stories were always tinged with tragedy and scandal. Glinda loved being loved too much to give herself up to the lions. She was not brave enough for that. Elphaba was, and that's why she'd left.

Her coat was thin, but Glinda relished the steely bite of wind against her skin. It brought her to reality, to this very moment in her life, walking down a street that looked like destitution, eyes downcast, walking hurriedly without anywhere to go. She felt that if she just kept her feet moving in their pretty little heels she would get to the very place she ought to be, as though that was where she had been headed all along.

After

The news came with such formality that Glinda's first thought was that it was a joke. A neat little letter, nonchalantly left in the mail like any other bill or invitation, a creamy official parchment with the words, "The Wicked Witch of the West is dead."

It was not the Wizard's writing, Glinda knew that for certain. He had a kind of shaky, uncertain scrawl that looked like that of a schoolboy, completely at odds with the sort of power he wielded. Glinda had received many notes from the Wizard over the years; formal invitations in the same elegant script as the one she'd just opened, and more personal invitations, done in his hurried, uncertain hand. She never accepted these second pleas, not until their messages stopped sounding like offers and more like orders. A trip to the palace, the dead of night, her body used, then discarded. Oh, he was careful, he was courteous- there was always a drink waiting for her when she arrived, a little green concoction of something, and he made sure she was escorted safely home. Glinda did not know whether Chuffrey knew of her trysts with the Wizard; if he did, he remained dutifully silent.

So, Elphaba was dead. Glinda went about her morning routine and tried to ignore the growing restlessness she could feel outside on the streets. Lauretta eyed her nervously when she brought in Glinda's morning tea, her wide blue eyes anxious.

"Thank you," Glinda smiled tightly at her handmaid, more a friend than a servant, but on this morning nothing but a ghost carrying a tea tray. Glinda sipped from the green-rimmed china and waited for the tears to flow. She demanded a lump in her still-young throat, the release that would come with racking sobs. She wanted that pain that blossoms in one's stomach and spreads like wildfire through the veins, until just inhabiting one's body is agony.

But the misery did not come. Eventually the sun outside her organza curtains was in the middle of the sky and Glinda remained rigid in her morning chair, a book held limply between her hands. It was time to call Lauretta in again, be dressed, do her public duty. As the girl came in and stripped Glinda of her clothes (Glinda saw her young eyes wonder each morning, perhaps she liked the attention, toyed with the idea that one day she might be courageous enough to touch her), she felt the skin of her old life fall around her feet. This was Lady Glinda, protector of the masses, the most beautiful and dignified public servant Oz had ever known.

It was an empty title. The Wizard's whore, they called her, in the salons and the streets. A pretty nothing, airheaded and ambitionless. The woman who knew otherwise was now gone an perhaps had been gone for a long while. In death her body was removed from the earth- her soul, though Elphaba would never agree to that- but the girl who was Elphaba, fierce and loyal and simply fearsome, had died for Glinda the day she sent Glinda home on that train. Hold out, Glinda had learned, was not a promise of Elphaba's return, but a plea to hold onto her mind, despite the temptations of the world. The kiss meant goodbye.

Elphaba was at peace. Perhaps Glinda could be, too.