The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
--Flannery O'Connor
She was a politician at heart. What was popularity but a campaign? She learned at an early age to perfect the art of the half-truth and the undeniable mask formed out of a small smile and a head tilt a carefully-schooled voice that sounded remarkably free of all guile.
She was rarely honest. She outright lied even less than she told the truth, but most often she said what people needed to hear; it's how she so often found herself, later in life, in front of the adoring and cheering masses of her country, taking in their undying adoration of her and every word she spilled. There were times when she regretted swearing to never clear her old friend's name in their eyes, wondering if her golden touch would have cleaned up the horrible and unfair muddying of Elphaba's good name, but the rare moment of uninhibited honesty she had exhibited in her promise to her best friend kept her jaw clenched tightly shut every time she heard the moniker of "wicked witch" and celebrations of the green woman's death. She could be called many things, but one thing Glinda the Good could never be labeled was an actual liar—white lies, she told herself, were allowable when uttered for the sake of a promise made to a friend.
Her honesty always seemed to be brought about by Elphaba. Elphie, the one true friend she'd had in her entire life, who never cared a whit about how Glinda looked or who her parents were or how much power and prestige the blonde may possess; Elphie, whose green skin and midnight hair and shadowed eyes would haunt Glinda's sleep at least once a week for the rest of her life; Elphie, who had brought out the unselfish side of Glinda that everyone thought was there, but that was never truly exhibited until Shiz. There were few moments of unfettered honesty in her life, but she remembered every single one of them, painfully and fully, and the involvement of Elphaba each time.
The first had come in the Emerald City, when she had, for the first time, acknowledged Elphaba as her closest friend. It had surprised her even as she uttered the words; until then, she had thought of Elphie as a friend, certainly, and a surprisingly decent roommate, but hardly anything more. Yet there was not a single other person with whom she would have set off to the Emerald City with, unprotected and unchaperoned, on a whim with no prior warning. Such an idea would never have even occurred to her, and never had—until Elphaba asked her, and she had agreed without thought or hesitation. Almost as surprising as her unintended acknowledgement of her and Elphie's friendship was how much it had meant to the other girl. True, it shouldn't have surprised her, given how gratefully Elphaba had reacted to Glinda's first overtures of friendship (fake as it may have been) when she passed on the pointed black hat.
The second had come when she realized everything they were capable of. In what may have been the most terrifying moment of her life, hiding from the guards of the Wizard, looking at Elphie and the wild look in her eyes, how much darker her skin became when she was flushed with fear and anger and power, the electricity left over from her spellwork practically exploding off of her skin, she had wanted nothing more than to fly away with her best friend and change the world. Because together they could, where maybe no one else could, and for the first time in her life, Glinda felt like there was a change that she could participate in, that she wanted to be a part of, that she could affect. Elphaba's power and passion, coupled with Glinda's charm and golden character… what chance did a grey-haired old man and his press secretary have against them? For the briefest moment, she let herself forget her family, her ties to society, the man she loved, the life she could hardly imagine giving up; she knew that if she was honest, there wasn't a single thing she wanted more in the world than to follow Elphaba to wherever she may lead.
She wished later, so vehemently, that she could have realized then that the life she was so incapable of giving up would never be the same with Elphie not in it.
As she watched Elphaba come into her own with her power, soaring high above the city and the guards and the entire population screaming for her downfall, she called out, however futilely—for by then it must have been impossible for Elphaba, floating so high above the world, defying the laws of gravity, to have heard her—that she hoped for happiness for her friend. And she did, more than anything in the world. Her third moment of unbridled honesty was naught but a fervent hope that her friend would find what she was looking for, accomplish her goals, and finally find the happiness that someone with her heart and compassion so deserved. There was not an ounce of dishonesty in her wish for her friend, nor a single whit of selfishness; there was nothing but pure, unadulterated love for the girl who had become so important in her life.
Fittingly enough, the third and last moment of unbridled honesty in her life came the very last time she saw Elphaba before her death. The realization that this was truly going to be the last time she saw her friend tore at her heart, feeling that if Elphaba left, there would be nothing left to keep her honest, to remind her to stay strong and hold out, to finally make the world a better place. Her own obstinacy kept her from throwing herself into the green woman's arms and sobbing, instead keeping herself a respectable distance away only because she knew that if she touched her friend once more she'd never be able to let go, as she finally told Elphaba just how much she was changed for having had the green girl in her life. When Elphaba returned her sentiments, and Glinda realized that she would be missed by Elphaba just as much as she would miss Elphaba, she felt what was left of her heart—fragile already from the absolute mess the wizard and Nessa and Boq and Fiyero had made of their lives—crack and then crumble, collapsing in on itself finally. With whatever strength she had left, she said her good-byes to Elphaba, in as dignified a way as she could muster, and allowed herself to be hidden away when the hunting party finally made it into the castle.
For months and months afterwards, she would sleep only with the aid of wine and poppy seed, Elphaba's screams as she died echoing in her head every time she closed her eyes.
She steeled herself enough to make it through the initial celebrations with the people of the country, and then promptly sealed herself into her private chambers and refused to leave for weeks, claiming exhaustion and a head cold. The pain of abandonment never faded, but it dulled eventually, and she learned to box it away into a corner of her mind, to be acknowledged and examined only at times of peace and silence when she sat alone in her bedroom, fingers tracing over the cover of the book that was her last connection to the one person she loved above all others.
If she was honest with herself—which she was determined not to be; she'd never done so before, so why start now?—she would acknowledge the tiniest kernel of hope that was locked and hidden away in the remains of her heart, that swore that a single bucket of water would not have killed someone so unbelievably stubborn as Elphaba and that no one would be better than her at disappearing without a trace when the need arose.
Instead, she refused to even let herself think about it, because hope would lead to searching, and if Elphaba even was alive and wanted to see Glinda, she would certainly have come by now; searching would only reopen the wounds and refresh the pain.
And so Glinda, a politician at heart, used her greatest skill and lied to herself and believed. No matter how much Glinda loved her and wished to bring her back, Elphaba was dead. Because honesty was no good when all it did was hurt.