Authors Notes:
Written from a long period of fruitless frustration left by situations addressed in WICKED, the Novel by Gregory Maguire. And partly based on some ghostly part of my past; a someone in my head, that just won't die.
Influenced also by Evanescence: "Everybody's Fool."
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Because the Green girl and her best friend needed closure.
DISCLAIMERS:
I do not own Elphaba nor Glinda, nor the Wizard or the world of Oz.
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Never was; Never will Be - Confessions of Glinda The Good
'I rip your name into tiny pieces in my mind and scatter them with gentle hands into the wind..'
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No matter how much time passes, still my mind pauses to reflect on you at least once, and it bitters me.
Elphaba Thropp: Third Descending of Nest Hardings.
Your face, your words, as you said your goodbyes to me, still linger in my mind; Playing and warped like a far off melody that won't stop. Up and left us all to disappeared into thin air; for some feverish cause that I still have yet to figure out..
And despite all these questions, all these seemingly innocent feelings of curiosity of you now, I must ask one thing: Just why is it that I can't forget you?
Because You haunt me.
Everyday, I can recall how you might sound making a remark about my supercilious lifestyle, as though you had been here your self this whole time. You'd notice no doubt how fake my smiles are now; my laughter. And how your retorts would sound, dripping with mock irony and underlined with secret sympathy and dare I say it out loud; Love.
Love; You selfish, beautifully proud woman!
Miss. Elphie no More, it did indeed come to this. You of all people, should have expected it; For you nursed it a long while.
You kept far enough away to make my soul burn and my eyes run dry and yet so close to my heart, that even drawing in breath would hurt and become such a struggle.
You had.. No: You have no idea.
Once you left, Nessarose was so lost, so saddened that I felt I had to step in and became what little I could to make up for the horrendous gap your disappearing had caused us all.
I did as best as I could to remain smiling for everyone who had been grieving, for someone with so little happiness left to give herself. And Goodness knows, I did try my very best...
I did it hoping that some day you would return to us all; return here to me and see all the work I had done in your behalf to hold us all together. I hoped you would return and see that in your absence, I tried so hard to bridge the gap; Tried so hard to make it as though you never left, so that when you returned it could all be the same.
But it never was and never could be... I understand that now.
I understand how we were both two sides of very different coins, and our roles in life tore us apart; Or so I tell myself. I can't help but wonder what would have happened, had you stayed.
Oh, but Elphaba; No, Elphie.. It was so hard.
No one wanted to think about you anymore, or talk about you. It was as though you put a thin veil of concealment over our memories. (Or was it Terrible Morible, was that it? Do you still recall our little 'pet name' for our dear Head? )
When finally I had graduated and became all I had never dreamed of becoming, even I had begun to think of you and our time together as a dream. It never did seem as real, even though I grasped onto it and tried to keep you alive in my Heart. I never wanted to believe you were truly gone.
I was still such a scared little girl and my mind flashed back to the night at the Inn at Emerald City. You had comforted me, but you weren't there then and I felt as though I had no one. Somehow, by the grace of the Unnamed God (Are you still such an Atheist?) I had begun to finally move forward in my life, and I married. You were but a sigh in the wind to me then; a passing thought, a tiny heartache before I slept at night. But I had healed; mostly.
You had, at first, gotten your wish. And I had begun to forget all about you.
And then the attacks began: The Rebel Army formed against the Great Wizard of Oz.
Somehow when I think about this, I smile just a moment. As I remember you standing at the back of the room at Shiz; So impassioned, so lively, such a character you were. You embarrassed me always, being so passionate, so sincerely active in your beliefs. But this was not because I thought you were a fool. (Although if that was the impression I had given you, then perhaps I always had a knack for sweetening lies to truths.)
It was because you were so real, so much more real then anyone in Shiz; More real then I could have ever hoped to imagine for myself.. for anyone of us.
That's why I loved you so.. And why I love you still, despite it all.
I tried to tell myself I was healed of you; That I no longer cared and good Riddance!
But when those attacks began (and oh how could I not notice them?), and as you might have figured I was placed right in the center of it all, smiling and making it all better for everyone; I had known.
I knew it was you that night too, the attempted assault to Madame Morrible. But I couldn't find you! You were so cruel to me, keeping me so lost while you were alive without so much of a word. And suddenly after so many years of telling myself you never existed and that you were a dream, there you were.
And perhaps given my role in life, it was understandable..
No!
Not even a word! Did you think so little of me, that I could have turned you in?
Oh Elphie..
I know you might have thought of me a fool then, for what I had become without you. But Dear Elphaba, please understand my life has been a series of pull strings and cover-ups. It had seemed my only role in life. Perhaps I wasn't strong enough to break away on my own as you had, but Elphaba, I was so terrified all alone; It felt like the only thing to do at the time. And given the present state of it all, my only thing to do now. And when at last, things had begun to calm, all we had ever wished to happen had..
You died.
..You are gone from me but still the old you from Shiz smiles in that weird sort of smirk you gave for a smile from across the room when I glanced there. My heart breaks all over.
And although I smiled and sang along with all of Oz while it cruelly rejoiced over your death; I cried inside and felt inclined, at last, to write this.
I don't expect you to believe me; Most of my life, I was false with you. I apologize, for all that it matters now or is worth.
But know this:
You were and always will be my best friend.. I just regret how life twisted us apart so. And although I try to replay events in my mind, rewrite the past, I can't imagine it working any differently..
And I believe you knew that, my Dear Elphaba. We were two different breeds, you and I.
Perhaps one day, when I too meet my end (And that might be sooner then either of us had imagined, as I grow weaker by the day) perhaps, by some quirky chance we will meet again in the Other Land for a lark. (And don't you tell me you didn't have a soul.. What poppycock you would spew when you were younger; Of course you did!)
And though you so cruelly denied me the chance of being in your life at least fleetingly, I understand it all now. You were only trying to protect us all, weren't you? But being apart from you, seemed far crueler then anything they could have done..
I bid you farewell, and hope to meet you again in some other place and time.
Yours..
Forever,
Glinda