Slave
"You are not a slave here, you know that don't you dear?" he said to her one night as she lay on the bed next to him after she woke up from what seemed like the tenth nightmare that night, "You can leave if you feel it is best."
The woman that had suddenly jolted from the mattress shot him a look as a hand ran through her tangled blonde hair, "I don't need to leave, Chuffers," she said sharply. She moved her legs over the edge of the bed and sat there for a while, her delicate back turned towards her husband with silky golden hair covering most of it, twiddling her fingers in deep thought.
"You've been screaming her name out loud for the past hour," stated Sir Chuffrey as he adjusted the buttons on his nightshirt, "Don't lie to me and say that nothing is wrong."
Her eyes, ocean blue, were suddenly casted downwards in an emotion that he couldn't exactly figure out. Was it anger, sadness, regret, or pain?
Chuffrey didn't know but what he did know was that something was wrong in Glinda's small world, something was very wrong indeed.
"I just… I just had a terrible nightmare about her," Glinda didn't dare say who she was talking about. It was pointless anyways, Chuffrey and herself knew who it was. There was no point in bringing more pain into the blonde's heart by saying her name over and over again like several stabs to her heart from a knife.
"What happened in it?" her husband made an attempt to try and figure out what was going on inside that head of hers.
Shifting of fabric was heard as Glinda wrapped her arms around herself and looked down at her half bare legs that were barely covered by her nightgown.
"It was terrible, Chuffers. She died, she was melted by that farm brat and oh Oz it was just too horrible to be true!" she cried as she instinctively started to leak tears of sorrow from her wide eyes. A hand was laid on her shoulder and the blonde looked over it to see that her husband had moved closer to comfort her. She almost felt touched, happy that he was trying to console her, and that he went and ruined it.
"Well, darling you don't know if it's true or not… I mean it could have happened but-"
She cut him off with another glare.
"Don't even suggest it," she snarled as she hastily got up from the bed, layering the flimsy bathrobe she had grabbed from the hope chest over her body, and looked out the window.
"She's a wanted woman, a dangerous witch," tried Chuffrey once more but he got nowhere with that idea.
"Do you know her?" snapped Glinda as she fiercely glanced at him and then went back to the scenery outside her window, "Because if you did then you would know that it is all lies! She is not a dangerous witch."
"You mean the girl that you once knew isn't a witch. You don't know her now, Glinny she's probably changed just as you have," Chuffrey was going to fight with reason, with logic but Glinda didn't want to hear any of it.
"You don't know her!" stressed the blonde as she lit a candle, held it in her grasp, and stared out into the black sky.
"Neither do you I'd say, not anymore darling," he said as he made an attempt to pull the covers over himself and go back to sleep.
"Of course you would say that," huffed the woman bitterly, "You just don't understand," she muttered quietly more to herself than to him. But Chuffrey heard it anyways.
He sat up, with his weak elbows propping the rest of his body upwards on the soft mattress, "Don't understand what, my dear?" he challenged, "The bond between you and her? Because I believe that I understand that quite clearly and…"
He stopped when he saw the fiercest, angriest expression that had ever been on her face and realized that it was for him.
"Don't," she hissed through her teeth as her eyes shot looks of blue lighting bolts at him.
Her husband, the acclaimed Baron of Gillikin, stared at her for a long time.
"I take back what I said," he said finally as he pulled the covers over himself and tried to go back to sleep.
"What?" asked the blonde confused. She nearly dropped the candle as she asked the question, only to fumble with it shortly afterwards and then catch it in her grasp once again.
"I take back what I said about you being a slave. You really are a slave, Glinda. You just can't see it," he muttered under his breath.
"Not to you I'm not but I'm a slave to my own emotions, to my own wants and needs however selfish and painful they are," shot back Glinda emotionally as she thought of her only friend, no companion was the best word to describe her.
"Everyone is a slave to their own emotions dear," Chuffrey said with a laugh, "But you, you are a slave to her. A slave through and through to that woman, the Wicked Witch of the West."
"I am not," defended Glinda as she absentmindedly began to braid her long golden locks, a pathetic attempt to try and forget about the conversation at hand.
Chuffrey's lips turned into a smirk, or a smile depending on the angle that a person was looking at.
"Denial," he sang out as he looked at her.
She frowned heavily and cursed under her breath quickly stopping the act of braiding her hair, "I am not a slave to Elphaba," though even as she said it Glinda couldn't deny it that in her heart that it was true.
"I'm not," she said it out loud to try and make it true but the words seemed fake and forced on her tongue.
"Go to her if you must, but be warned that if you do then you'd be fully submitting yourself to her in every possible way, shape, and form my dear," said Chuffrey from his almost asleep state.
"If that were to happen, would you lose all respect you have for me?" she asked quietly as she set down the candle on one of the tables in the room.
One eye opened and settled its gaze on her glorious face, a bit wrinkled from age but still beautiful nonetheless.
"I lost all respect for you a long time ago, dear. I lost it when you weren't looking and were focusing on her."
She gasped, so he did know.
"How did you- did you follow me when I-" she couldn't get coherent sentences out.
"I can't believe you didn't think that I wouldn't notice when you left and ventured out into the city on your own. I had to have you followed back then! I was worried about you, and then it turns out that you were going to her! And not even confronting me about it…" he paused, angry enough to blow off his top but he kept his cool, "You didn't think that I wouldn't check up on you… follow you to that abandoned Corn Exchange and see what you were up to… with that freak. Admit it darling; you were never a slave to yourself, not since you met her. Ever since you met that freak you were a slave to her. So go, go be her slave and comfort her and see if she's all right but don't expect me to condone it or even forget about it. I will hold it against you till the end of our days."
She breathed in slowly as trembling fingers grasped at the frayed edges of her nightgown in worry.
"But- but you won't tell anyone, will you?" Her voice trembled like crashing waves upon a shore.
"No, I would never reveal the best of you, Glinda," he said softly, "Because I believe the best of you will be your undoing."
Glinda said nothing to that and only sighed heavily as she weighed on her options.
"You're an old fool," she spat out at him at last as she turned to leave. She crossed the room towards the door when she stopped.
His words echoed around in her head like a haunting melody and the blonde woman found herself retracting her steps and being back at the window once more. She stayed in the room and fought every urge to run and save Elphaba before it was too late. She only stayed to spite her husband, even though she felt deep inside of her that she would regret it later. As she stood by the window with the candle back in her grasp again Glinda feared that she would never see Elphaba again… But she did not leave and it was out of sheer stubbornness and determination to prove to her husband once and for all that she was not a slave to Elphaba, though in truth she really was…
And even if Elphaba was really dead Glinda realized that Elphaba would never really be gone from her thoughts and her life. She and Elphaba were almost bound to each other by the bonds of friendship and something more. And those bounds that made them slaves to one another… could never be broken no matter how this world or any other world tried to tear them apart.
"You never fail to surprise me," Chuffrey's voice broke the intense silence that had been swirling in the airs for hours on end as the late hours of the night had turned into the early hours of dawn, "Aren't you going to come back to bed?"
Glinda, still at her post at the window, looked back at him faintly, "Look, " she said hoarsely, "They're already celebrating." She pointed a finger to the noisy crowds that were gathering in the streets of the city. Chuffrey came over and looked over her and saw the same sight that she was seeing.
He whistled lowly, "Well… then I guess at last you are free," he said softly as his lips pressed against her neck quickly and then he left to go wake up the rest of the house.
The blonde stayed where she was, tears slowly tracing a path down her cheeks as she processed the hard truth that Elphaba was dead.
"I don't feel free, Elphie," she whispered faintly to the air, as if the air held an apparition or the spirit of her now dead friend, "In fact I feel more trapped and enslaved than ever."
Chuffrey came back in then, and held out a hand to her as a gesture that she had to go prepare a speech for the celebrated occasion in Oz. She took his hand and when she did she could feel the ever lasting chains that had been binding her to Elphaba entangle themselves to Chuffrey and by extension to the rest of Oz.
A pat on her hands from Chuffrey brought her out of her thoughts.
"I know you're upset now, dear but in time you'll see that this is a good thing. Now you are a slave to only yourself…"
She stopped dead in her tracks in the hallway and looked at him straight in eyes, her blue eyes almost blinding him.
"Am I? Am I, really Chuffers?" she asked softly.
"Of course you are darling," her husband answered after a beat, confusion flooding his features.
The softened look she gave him only hinted that she did not share the same opinion but she did not say anything on the topic ever again. He watched as she pressed on, walking along the never-ending hallway towards the balcony to give the speech that had been hastily prepared for her. And though he quickly dismissed it as a figment of his imagination and never said a word of it to anyone, Chuffrey could have sworn that he had seen long, dangling silver chains flowing behind her… the same chains that had bound her to Elphaba that were now binding her to himself and to Oz.
This is the product of having your wisdom teeth out and then having to recover. I've been stuck on my couch for five days now and finally was feeling better to go on my laptop and write this. It's a bit weird but I like it. I promise I will try and upload more to my multichapter stories but I will make no promises.
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