A/N: Thank thank thank you all for the reviews and alerts and faves! You make me a very happy little Gelphie shipper :D Like I promised, this one's a bit longer and there's a bit more action. Warning, teeny little swearword and a bit of implied violence. But I reckon you can handle it ;D
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or places mentioned here.
She was always flinching. Flinching away from his hands, flinching away from his smell. Flinching away from her womanly responsibilities.
Sir Chuffrey was a well respected man in his circles. A savvy, ruthless businessman, his useful connections and thorough disregard for the lower class had landed him right in the good books of the Wizard of Oz- they shared a passion for dominance and thirst for power.
The Wizard had commended Chuffrey on his marriage to Glinda.
"I heard of your union with Lady Glinda Upland, Sir Chuffrey." the silluette behind the veil muttered to his dinner guest.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"I remember her vaguely. Pleaded to me once in her youth, accompanied by a strong-willed girl of unusual colouring. Elphaba, I think it was. The disappeared third Thropp descending. That invalid sister of hers is causing quite a stir in Munchkinland, of course. Let us hope that your new wife has not been influenced by her acquaintances, Sir Chuffrey."
"No, Your Highness."
"Pretty little thing, isn't she? You're a lucky man, Chuffrey. Excellent in bed, I imagine?"
And because he had nothing else to say, Chuffrey muttered, "Yes, Your Highness." .
Lies, lies! That bitch of a wife of his, cold as dry-ice and more dangerous. Incompetent and useless woman! She refused to give him what was dutifully owed, as his wife and as an inferior!
Tonight was another of the Wizard's palace balls. Chuffrey and Glinda sat in hostile silence as they drove through the crowd of grubby admirers and their carriage passed through the intimidating gates of the palace walls. All around there were businessmen and their wives, all dressed to the nines and flaunting their individual celebrity. The dresses were more extravagant than those seen at award shows, and many of the women seemed vacant of any expression due to the amount of collagen pumped into their snobby faces. Glinda stood out in the crowd, as she was born to do, sparkling in an aqua-coloured floor-length ballgown, a ridiculous tiara balancing precariously atop her bouncing, almost golden curls. The women stared, the men stared. Their thoughts were as one as Oz's most beloved couple made a birth through the crowd and ascended the palaces emerald-specked marble steps: Lucky bastard.
Glinda waved and smiled and clung to her husband's arm, relishing in the attention and adoration. She tinkled that irritatingly false laugh, and thanked every one of the women who complimented her dress, and had the good grace to blush as men introduced themselves and lifted her delicate fingers to their lips. They passed into the entrance hall, through to the dining room and the impossibly long table at which Glinda and Chuffrey, along with all those lucky enough to have garnered an invitation, were deemed to dine. They sat at their allotted places, and witnessed men around them fighting for the right to sit near Glinda, their wives looking affronted and jealous.
They made Chuffrey sick.
Suddenly the lights dimmed, and the infamous screen behind which the Wizard sat and conducted all of his dinner parties was wheeled in. A hush fell over the party and all stood once again as the outline of a man marched in and seated himself as the shadow table behind the screen. The gentlemen and their wives waited until the Wizard was seated, then sat down themselves. They held their breath as one, and soon enough the curiously chilling voice of the ruler of Oz rang out across the dining hall.
"Welcome, esteemed guests and followers of this Great new Oz. I have called us together tonight not just to eat, drink and be merry- which is often the same as drink, to be sure- but also because I have an important and dangerous announcement to inform you all of. However, I shall wait until you are all sufficiently comfortable and well fed before we move onto business. Enjoy your food, and hope that you can keep it down later."
Typically Wizard. Vauge, questionable, uncomfortably cryptic.
Five whiskeys later, and the room was roaring with the banter of drunken aristocrats; the very air seemed thick with shouts and later-regretted speeches. Sex was everywhere, hunger in the eyes of the men and women alike. The table was spewn with forgotten roasts and lonely uneaten vegetables, the royal green tablecloth stained beyond repair by spilt alcoholic beverages of questionable effect.
"Chuffrey!" slurred a beefy, purple-faced man sitting alongside Glinda's husband. "Why's you not taking 'vantage of this festive 'casion?" the yound woman sitting on his lap giggled drunkenly and slapped the man on him expansive forearm.
"I means to say," he continued, "that is if I had your wife," he gestured suggestively to Glinda, "I'd not be wasting my time with this one..."
The woman looked affronted and hit him again, harder. Glinda looked ashamedly down at her hands, a steady pink blush rising in her cheeks. She had raised nothing but water to her lips the entire evening, and had retreated into her shell more and more as the night wore on and the room around her fell into disarray, over themselves and each other. Chuffrey's manliness appeared offended by the drunk's comment, and in a moment of violent disregard grabbed his wife and pulled her in-affectionately onto his lap, and dug his fingers into her waist, hard enough to leave a bruise. Glinda winced in pain, and tried not to cry out her protest. He kissed her repeatedly on the neck, ignoring how stiff her form had become at the contact. People had abandoned their conversations in favour of staring; they had never seen physical interaction between the two in public.
"Tell them, Glinders," he growled into her collarbone, "tell them what a cold hearted bitch you really are."
The room had fallen completely silent now. Glinda was seething, breathing heavily through her teeth, livid and embarrassed. She pushed away from Chuffrey and broke from his clutches. She faced the table of her staring peers, and announced in a shaking voice that she would be excused for a moment. She left through the high dining room doors, with the glare of a hundred eyes on her back. Chuffrey slid his chair back as she left and stumbled to his feet with violence and disillusion in his eyes. The audience (for that is what they must be called) looked slightly frightened at his fury and went quietly back to their drinks.
"Come back here, wife! Have I said you could be excused?" he roared, slamming the door she had just left through open and marching down the adjoined passageway after her. He ran blinded through the halls searching for his prey. He entered a room at random, and pinned her tiny, helpless figure up against the wall of the restroom she had taken refuge in.
"Calm down, you baffoon!" she choked from between his smothering fingers, the courage of her words not supported by the plain terror in her eyes.
He's going to do it this time. I can't believe he's really going to do it. I'm sorry Elphie, I tried to wait. I tried.
The drink had taken him over, replaced the man who had married her with a beast; a beast who was ready and willing and thoughtless enough to do anything.
Did he bring a knife? Or will he just choke me? I've heard that's an okay way to go- they say you go to sleep just before you die.
She was suspended in the air by the force of his grip, tiny legs kicking frantically as her brain screamed for air. Suddenly he let her fall, strode over to the still-open bathroom door and locked it, an ominous click that scared Glinda almost as much as the crazed look in her husband's eyes.
Why is he locking that? What, he doesn't want witnesses? What the hell does he plan on doing with my body afterwards, then?
He turned slowly, looking for all the world like a predator stalking a particularly evasive buck.
"I've tried to be reasonable, you heartless monster of a woman. I've given you chances, I've made allowances. But there is only so long, there is only so much I can take."
His voice was disturbingly calm as he unzipped the front of his trousers, his face a mask of determination as he advanced on his shaking wife.
No. Please, no...
***
"And so, ladies and gentlemen, as you can all see this woman- whom we must now refer to as the Wicked Witch of the West, is inconceivably dangerous and undoubtedly the cause of all wrongdoing and wickedness that has penetrated our glorious Oz of late. I trust you will all alert everyone you can in your respective sectors to the imposing threat that this woman, if we can call her that, poses to the advancement of society in Oz. Spread the word! She is Wicked, and wickedness deserves to be effectively eliminated- before it is too late."
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