A/N: Okay, this is not my usual thing. My sister's best friend's sister died last night in a car crash as a result of drunk driving. She was twelve years old. I have issues talking to people about how I'm feeling, and I don't cry in front of my family, so this is my weird way of expressing myself.
Disclaimer: Blah blah, everything you recognize not mine….
It's a booksicle. Basically just musical's plot in the book's setting.
And Ever
Glinda the Good always knew she would die alone. She knew from the moment she watched Elphaba defy gravity—only she didn't admit it to herself then. It seemed almost fitting that her last day was the Anniversary.
Two years had passed. Two years. The full impact of Elphaba's death had set in long ago. She was gone. She would never return. And Glinda could almost accept it. The large gaping hole in her heart would never be filled. The total agony she felt had been blunted to a dull, constant ache that she could ignore during the day by keeping herself busy.
She had found a way to keep her true feelings all bottled up during the day, all except a false cheeriness. She would smile and wave and keep her mouth shut when dealing with the public. In private, she would let a frown creep onto her face. Without her make-up, her face was older, more tired and worn.
It was at night that she really felt overwhelmed. It was as if washing off her different powders also washed away her false happiness. At first she lay in bed, gripping her bedsheets, hating the soft green glow that turned her skin green. For a while she toyed with the idea of changing the color of the Emerald City.
But, no, the City of Emeralds would stay the way it was, a shining and green beacon to travelers.
After three months had gone by, she was able to close her eyes without seeing the awful images of Elphaba's skin literally melting away or hear her bloodcurdling scream.
At six months, the tears stopped.
On the first Anniversary, she holed up in her chambers for all except one short speech—"Citizens of Oz, I am very happy"—gag—"to inform you that a year has passed since the"—oh how she hated this nickname—"Wicked Witch of the West melted!"—and a ball with all of the governing parties and nobility of Oz. She kept quiet, blending mostly into the crowd with her tiara purposely dulled and her skirts significantly less poofy than usual.
At eighteen months, she had stopped looking at calendars for anything other than how many days until one social event or another.
So it happened that the second Anniversary caught her unawares.
She was riding in her carriage to a secluded spot outside the City so she could go by bubble to Kiamo Ko for the first time since the Day. It should've been simple; she'd go unnoticed, mourn, and return all before she would be expected to make another public appearance.
No one counted on drunken Munchkins driving their own carriage recklessly.
The two collided just at the city gates.
There were plenty of witnesses at the scene. They all reported seeing Glinda's carriage—smeared with dirt so as to make it harder to recognize—being hit by the Munchkin's as they swung around. When they'd sobered up, they couldn't recall just why it was that they were swerving. It might have just been the drink making it hard to see the road.
Regardless, Lady Glinda was killed.
Her horses were unharmed. Her driver suffered a broken leg and both arms broken. The Munchkins suffered minor scratches and bruises.
Glinda's body was an unforgettable sight. Her arms, legs, and neck were all broken. Blood was smeared across her beautiful face. Her eyes were wide open in shock. Upon cleaning her face of blood, her grief-stricken appearance was known.
The autopsy declared that the cause of death was blunt trauma to the neck, shoulders, and trunk. The body was returned to Glinda's family in pieces.
The Munchkins would never again even think about looking at another bottle of wine. As it turned out, they were stuck in Southstairs near Horrible Morrible anyway. For life.
The news reached all of Oz, throwing all the citizens into mourning. Glinda had been good to them. The Animals built a large statue of her alongside the one they'd built of Elphaba two years prior. The only Ozians that ventured into the Animal village where the statues were either knew or suspected the truth of the "Witch" and therefor didn't object to the way the Glinda-statue's arm was around the Elphaba-statue's shoulders, or the way Glinda-statue's other arm reached out to some Fox kits at her feet.
Even far out in the Vinkus, at the very edge of Oz, Elphaba and Fiyero heard of their friend's death. Fiyero mourned, but his bran-and-needles brain had dulled human emotions in him. He was a simpler being. He mourned the loss of their friend, but he felt no need to try and attend any wake for her, least of all try and make it to the funeral.
Elphaba was thrown into a rage. She didn't cry—she never cried—but ground her teeth at Fiyero's passive acceptance. So she took off on her broom, needing to see the blonde's body before she could fully let the impact hit her.
However, she was not prepared for seeing what had become of her friend. She had entered the palace, unbeknownst to the guards posted. Glinda's maids were laying their late mistress into a solid marble tomb. Elphaba fell from her perch in the corner of the ceiling, the broom clutched in her hand making her tumbling look like a bird swooping down.
The poor maids screamed and ran, leaving Glinda exposed in her casket.
Elphaba took Glinda's cold, dead hand, the broken arm making it flop at an awkward angle. Her resolve finally cracked, and she sobbed. It was a sight to see, really. The supposedly dead Wicked Witch of the West crying over the body of the Good Witch of the North.
The irony of it all.
It didn't last.
Soon the terrified maids returned behind some of the Gale Force. They were stopped short at what they saw. The green woman was not, as they feared, mutilating the body of their ruler.
Elphaba turned. Suddenly she was no longer Elphaba Thropp, best friend of Glinda Upland, but the Witch herself. Her dark eyes blazed above burned tear tracks. Her green skin seemed to glow in the emerald palace. Her hair was a mess from flying. The only think missing was her signature pointed hat.
"Leave this place," she said softly, dangerously. She spoke for Elphaba in the tone of the Witch. Grief had stripped all the feeling from her voice. The maids fled again, shrieking about ghosts and woe. The guards held their ground until the Witch took a menacing step foreward. Magick swirled around the room, crackling from her green fingertips, frizzing her hair. Small objects started to swirl around, pelting the Gale Force. Glinda's body lay untouched in it all.
As the men finally broke ranks and fled, Elphaba returned to herself. She fell to her knees. She hadn't lost control of her magick since the day with the Lion cub. With Fiyero.
"Oh, Yero," she moaned. The walls echoed her cry. Yero, Yero, Yero, my hero… Madame Governor… Nessa… Boq… Galinda…Glinda… Her grief flew all around her, smashing vases, wilting flowers, turning the walls to a dark forest green. She fell to her knees, head in her hands.
How could this have happened? It didn't seem right. She was the one who was hated; she'd gotten what she'd deserved, a life in exile. Poor, sweet, beautiful Glinda had always been looking out for the Ozians. She was strong in her own way. Fair, kind Glinda…
As she knelt at her only friend's side, tears streaming down her face, Elphaba felt her rage building. She wouldn't be satisfied in scaring half Glinda's staff to death or making small objects fly around the room. She wanted revenge.
She needed revenge.
Elphaba stood. She gently placed Glinda's hand—that she'd dropped upon the Gale Force entering—on top of the other. She smoothed blonde curls off her friend's forehead. Then she closed the casket. It was too much to look at the body, too harsh, cold.
Softly, she traced words into the marble. She only dragged her finger across, but her magick had her again, leaving an engraving in her spidery handwriting.
Glinda Upland, of the Upper Uplands
Ruler
Savior
Friend
May your life's journey finally come to an end
You will always be in my heart
It still didn't seem enough. Words failed to express the way Elphaba had felt about her only friend. Her best friend. "Best friends forever!" Galinda had once squealed in her perkie, high-pitched voice. "Forever and ever," solemn Elphaba had agreed. She slowly traced "Forever and ever" in the marble. Should she sign her work? It didn't seem practical, as it would announce the fact that she was alive. So she simply put "Love, E" down. It wouldn't tie Glinda to her. Oz wouldn't need to see the scandal of Glinda the Good being friends with the nameless Wicked Witch. No one would remember her as Elphaba. No one had ever cared. No one cared anymore. The Scarecrow—she could not think of him as Fiyero anymore—would forget her. Someone would recognize him as one of the Witch Hunters.
She left. It was as simple as that. She could have stormed out the grand palace doors, letting her pent-up magick open them before she got there. But she didn't. She was angry, furious, but she wasn't stupid. Oz didn't need the green woman. It needed time to mourn the woman they hadn't really known.
She found a newspaper clipping that detailed the crash. It also had pictures of the Munchkins that had hit her. Smirking in grim satisfaction, Elphaba headed to Southstairs.
Morrible looked up at her, but she quickly returned her gaze to the dirty stone floor. "She isn't there. She isn't there. Just another hallucination. She isn't there…" It seemed Morrible had finally cracked. Her arms were chained to the wall to keep her from killing herself. Long scratches ran down her receding hairline. Clumps of hair littered the ground.
Elphaba thought it was a pitiful sight.
The prisoners she was looking for cowered at the sight of her. She glared daggers at them, and their hair turned white. This didn't satisfy her need for revenge. She raised one hand and circled it in front of the cell. The bars got hot and blazed red before fading to a pale blue. Elphaba stepped easily through the blue bars as if it were an open doorway. The Munchkins' eyes grew wide as saucers, and they tried to claw their way through the stone walls behind them.
The Witch was back, cackling and howling at them. Then she was Elphaba again, wondering what good it would do to kill them now. The Witch was angry, furious. Elphaba was grieving, falling into a black hole of despair. And she was the Witch, getting the bloody revenge she so craved. On and on it went, lightning crackling along the walls, tears streaming down Elphaba's face. She was still cackling, and moaning Glinda's name. Morrible behind her was muttering to people that weren't there. All of Southstairs was lit up in a rainbow of colors. It was green, then yellow, then purple. Everything went white. Blinding white. The guards brave enough to go and see what was making all of the commotion were stopped in their tracks. One of the prisoners closer to where Morrible and the Munchkins were went blind.
A shock of red made the Witch lose her concentration. She was Elphaba again, looking in horror at the blood gushing from the Munchkins' necks. She'd slit their throats.
"No," she whispered. "No!" Again the walls threw her cries back at her, moaning and groaning. No! No! No! No…no…no…
Suddenly everything was too hot and too cold all at once. She shivered. Her ears were burning. Her face was a blistered mess. She ran. Out of Southstairs she went, her head in her hands, pushing past anything or anyone in her way.
Emotionally, she was a wreck. She couldn't remember if she was Elphaba Thropp of Munchkinland or the Wicked Witch of the West that terrorized the Vinkus.
Past a train headed to Shiz University. Had she attended there, once? Past a theatre playing Wiz-O-Mania. Had she and Glinda seen that show?
She stopped in front of a library. After all these years, she still found solace in books. The librarian didn't even look up as she entered. The Witch longed for him to take in her sweaty, shivery appearance, wanted him to scream in fear. Elphaba knew it was a good thing not to be recognized.
She headed to the back of the top floor. Elphaba sat in the windowsill, gazing out at the mourning citizens below her. The full impact of what she'd done finally hit her.
"Oh, Oz," she whispered. I murdered two people. She couldn't bring herself to say the words. Her anger was gone, replaced by hollow, aching sorrow. Killing those responsible hadn't brought Glinda back. No, it only made her seem even farther away. She would go to Heaven, like the good little girl she would forever be. Elphaba would go to Hell. Green, soulless Elphaba would suffer eternal punishment for what she did. She would deny it, say she hadn't meant to kill them, but in her heart of hearts she knew, really, that that was what she had had in mind when she'd set out for Southstairs.
It was almost tragic. Beautifully tragic.
Would it make it even more tragic if she actually had died two years ago? What would Glinda say when she arrived in her Heaven to find that Elphaba was not there waiting for her? Elphaba was definitely tied to Oz. She was healthy as a Horse, as the saying went. She would live a nice, full life alone. She couldn't go back to the Fiyero Scarecrow now. Too much had happened to her. She felt aged, although she really was only in her twenties. Maybe thirties. She'd lost track while on the run. She did know she was still considered young, physically. Emotionally she was old enough to be dead.
But how old did you have to be to die? Lurline knew, Glinda wasn't older than Elphaba. Unless she was the younger… It was impossible to keep track. It wasn't as if she could just ask Glinda. No, some vile drink had seen to that.
She rose again, her forehead against the windowpane. Would it be a quick death, if she flung herself out this window? Or wasn't it high enough? Would she live?
It wasn't worth the risk. No, if she were going to jump, she would make sure it would kill her.
She grabbed her broom, only now having realized that she still had it with her, and took off out the library window.
Would it be fitting to be found on the library steps? Or would it be more ironic to be found at the Emerald Palace? Now that she had decided that, yes, she would die tonight, it was only a matter of figuring out where she would do it. Definitely in the City of Emeralds. It was too…poetic not to be.
Elphaba soared higher and higher on her broom. What a wonder it was, flying. No one could be able to comprehend the complete and utter freedom unless they had flown themselves. She wouldn't expect anyone other than her Monkeys and Glinda to understand.
Seemingly of its own accord, Elphaba found herself back at the palace. Ozians below her were pointing and shouting in fear. She had forgotten to fly high enough that she wouldn't be seen.
Ah, well. It was no matter. She was going to be dead soon.
When she reached Oz Square, she flung herself off the broom, arms outstretched. The citizens below ran. So they thought she could fly without the broom? That was a foolish rumor. Humans weren't designed for flight.
She hit the ground hard. She wouldn't have had time to think anything, had she the urge to think some famous last words.
And then she let go. I'm coming, Glinda, her spirit cried out, soaring upward. Humans could fly without a broom or bubble, as it turned out. You just had to be dead first.
What she saw made her burst into tears again. It was the most she had ever cried in the span of only a few hours. There was Shiz University as she remembered it. Nessa was being wheeled around by Boq, who was no longer made of tin. Fiyero was waving at her, his blue diamonds shining in the sun.
And Glinda, sweet, sweet Glinda, was running in her direction, a bright smile on her face. Her blonde curls were flying in every different direction. She looked just as she had the first day they had met, only this time she was just beaming at her.
Elphaba returned the smile and ran the last two feet to her friend. They embraced, neither one of them willing to let go. They would hold on to each other for forever.
Forever and ever.
A/N2: Just to clear a few things up here. Boq is in the end bit there because, the way I see it, Boq died when his heart shrank. The Tin Man is Boq, in a sense, but Boq's spirit moved on. The same goes for Fiyero. Fiyero's body survived, but his soul didn't. Make sense?
Anyway, loved it or hated it, please drop a review.