Title: A Hollow Heart
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs to Universal Studios, and the Gregory Maguire.
Note: As I sat watching the most fantastic rendition of Witch of the East that I've heard in a long time, I began to wonder. What if it wasn't anger that was driving Boq, what if it was merely a cover for something else.
Note: I want to thank everyone who has been reading my various one-shots and commenting. I do try and decrease the number of spelling errors with every one I produce.
A Hollow Heart
As she gazed at the clock, showing only a few minutes before the hour, she realized that she didn't want to meet with him. Glinda Upland of the Upper Uplands, the un-elected ruler of Oz since the Wizards departure really, really didn't want to meet with the Tin Man. She understood intellectually at least, that the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion had just been trying to help the little girl that had been whisked into Oz, but that was knowledge of the head and not of the heart. And in her heart Glinda couldn't help but hate them all for helping to kill Elphie.
She didn't have any way of saying no, without offering insult either. Whatever her private feelings, in public she still supported the Witch hunters, and it was impossible to argue that anyone had provided more drive and focus for the hunters than had the Tin Man. So she sat in a small ante-room in the palace, a cup of tea half forgotten on a side table waiting for him to visit
Almost to the moment that the small clock began to chime, the door was opened and the large-ish man made of tin walked into the room in an oddly stiff-legged gait. He let the door closed behind him, before he spoke.
"Miss Glinda, thank you for seeing me." His voice was harsh, but with a slight tone of warmth underneath it that even being made of tin couldn't hide. Not to mention that he was first and only person to have called her 'Miss' since her days at Shiz. These days it was 'Lady Glinda', or 'your Goodness'.
"Oh I'm always happy to meet with one of the brave companions of Dorothy," she said with a fake smile that she could do so well. "After all, it's thanks to you that the Witch is dead."
The words tore at her heart even as she said them, but she was surprised to see an echo of pain in his eyes when she spoke of the dead Witch. That struck even Glinda, who was perhaps not the most observant person in Oz as very odd.
"What can I do for you?" she asked after a moments silence passed between them.
"I want to speak to you about the Witch," the Tin Man finally said. He seemed to take a deep breath, as if trying to give him courage. "I think it's passed time you and I spoke of Elphaba."
Glinda's eyes widened as he named Elphaba. Other than herself, Morrible and the Wizard she hadn't known that anyone else even knew the real identity of the Witch. It was one of the things that had allowed the Wizards propaganda to work so well, for a Witch could be declared evil, whereas a person with a name, a history, a childhood even, might evoke sympathy from the people of Oz.
"How did you know her name?" she asked carefully. And despite the fact that his metal shoulders weren't made for it, he managed a shrug.
"Unlike you, I've never had a problem remembering the names of people I know," it was said blandly enough to take the sting out of the accusation, but his words slammed into Glinda like a thunderbolt.
There was only one person whom she might know, and who had always called her 'Miss Galinda' whose name she had never taken the time to remember properly. He had called her on it constantly, but despite that she had managed, through lack of attention as much as anything else to get it wrong constantly.
However Glinda had never been more focused on anyone in her life as she stared into eyes of silver. "Boq," she whispered softly, unable to hide either the shock or her rising anger.
"You finally remembered."
"Boq," she said again, and this time there was no mistaking the anger in her voice. "How could you? You were her friend once, we all were. How could you have organized the hunt for her the way you did?"
He looked pained at that, and held up his hands in a placating gesture "Please Glinda, let me explain."
She came to her feet in a move too graceful to be called an explosion, but far to sudden and angry to be anything but, and fire flashed in her eyes. "Explain? By all means Boq, explain to me how you led a mob to her castle, how under your guidance they battered down the doors and helped that girl murder Elphie." It was a good thing, she would later think, that the ante-room was both fairly soundproof and reasonably far away from trafficked areas in the palace.
It would have been hard to explain why Glinda the Good was virtually screaming at the Tin Man, hero of Oz, about what he had done. "Explain to me how you went there to kill her," she finished with a snarl, waiting for his justifications to begin. He would say that she was wicked, and that he was only doing what the Wizard asked of him.
She was unable to explain why she was so angry, it was as if all the feelings she had been repressing in the weeks since Elphie's death had suddenly come to the fore, and found a target in the boy who had once had such a crush on her.
"I didn't go there to kill her," he snapped back, and she was surprised to hear true despair in his voice. "I went there for her to kill me."
Whatever she had been expecting him to say, what he actually said brought her to a complete and sudden stop.
"What?" she asked uncertainly, her anger having been snuffed in confusion. It was maybe ten seconds in which the two people simply stared at each other, both lost in their own thoughts.
Looking more forlorn than any man whose face was made of metal had any right too, he gestured helplessly. "I became a man of tin after Nessa stole my heart from me with a spell, she didn't want me to leave Munchkinland to come and find you," He explained. "And Elphaba turned me into tin."
"But then didn't she save your life?" Glinda asked with a confused look on her face.
"This isn't life," Boq responded hotly. "I can't feel anything. Not anger or sadness or joy. All I can do is try and remember how I used to act when I felt those things." He took a step towards her, and reached a tin finger to brush lightly across her cheek. "I can't feel, nor touch or taste or smell. I'm condemned to hell in this prison of metal, always completely cut off from the rest of the world."
"B-Boq," Glinda said with a stutter as her old classmate despaired before her. "I had no idea. But then why?" she asked, letting the question trail off.
"Because I did know Elphaba. Even if she had become wicked like the Wizard said, I knew she wouldn't just be able to kill me. Elphaba was many things, but she was never a murderer. So I helped raise an army, made myself a focus for them so that when we came to Kiamo Ko, she'd be so angry she'd forget that we were once friends and put me out of my misery."
He shouted those last few words, and sank to his knees with a thump, unable even now to summon the slightest twinge of emotion. Not that he could cry even if he had, but it just emphasized how hollow and empty his existence now was.
He didn't feel the hand on his shoulder, but he did see Glinda standing over him, a look of sympathy and sadness on her face. She knelt down on the carpet beside him, and giving no care to her elegant and beautiful clothes, wrapped first one, then the other arm as far around him as she could manage.
She never said a word as the two of them sat on the floor of the ante-room, both mourning the things they had lost.
And offering what little comfort she could, Glinda the Good cried for both of them.
-finis-