Author's note: Thank you so much everyone for the reviews and the reading. It is very muchly appreciated. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself and hope you have too, you've all been amazing. I'm working on another more serious Gelphie fic first but then on to the sequel, "The Thrill, Basis Domesticated". And now for the final chapter...
In which Elphaba and Glinda may not quite graduate
"It's a rite of passage!" Boq exclaimed.
"As if the past three years have not been rite of passage enough!" Glinda exclaimed back.
"But it's... graduation."
"No, the act of finishing university successfully is graduating. This is a graduation ceremony."
Boq looked at her suspiciously. "You have been spending entirely too much time with Elphie. Your tone, your style and your opinions are becoming quite indistinguishable."
"I fail to see that as a negative," Glinda asserted.
"She's infecting you with her ill will for the place," seemed to be Boq's main objection.
"Well obviously you like it here, Master Post Graduate."
That actually was Elphie, appearing from behind and swooping down to kiss Glinda quickly, slipping her hand over Boq's eyes.
He brushed it away. "I have no intention of leering at you but I prefer not to be blind," he sniffed.
"If you're feeling jealous I'm sure Crope or Tibbett will be happy to assist," Elphie said sweetly.
Boq ignored her and asked "You're not really thinking of not graduating?"
"I will be graduating. I will not be attending the ceremony. Difference."
Glinda was given a pointed look by Boq. She just laughed. Elphie must have overheard as she was arriving. Mustn't she?
"What is the objection here?"
"Why should I sit in a stuffy room for hours with hundreds of people I do not know to be handed a piece of paper by Morrible – a blank bit of paper I might add – all the while dressed in some ridiculous gown?"
"And tell me how exactly that differs from your normal mode of dress?" Pfannee broke in at this juncture.
"The hat is a bit flatter than I like," Elphie shot back deadpan.
"All the better for heaving in the air at the end."
"I shall throw the damn thing at Morrible," Elphie sulked.
"Anyway," Glinda attempted to dampen things down. "It's not a definite, we are just entertaining it as an option."
"But your parents have come all the way from Frottica."
"To see me, I should hope, not just for graduation. They've been doing other things, like helping us pack."
"Have they ever," Elphaba groaned.
"You wouldn't know," Glinda pointed out curtly. "You keep running away. The fact exams have finished and we are a day from receiving our results means no-one believes you when you say you are going to study."
Boq interrupted the lover's tiff about to take place and turned to Elphaba. "But what about your father? Won't he want to see you?"
"Frex? Heavens no, he won't come. All this way? For me? He'll come next year for Nessa and have a good look about then."
"What is it then? Are you worried about your results? Well, not Elphaba, obviously..." He began to realise that might have sounded a little cruel regarding the one of the pair who was not Elphaba.
"Glinda has nothing to worry about," Elphaba protested as Boq knew she would.
Glinda herself felt she should have some input. "I shall be perfectly content with a lower second."
"She is being entirely too modest," Elphie interjected. "Well, you are. You know you are."
Well aware of Elphaba's wild – and unfounded, she felt – belief in her academic abilities Glinda was very uncomfortable with this conversation and luckily it evaporated. Or Elphaba evaporated it for her by starting up with some new complaint about politics or something, Glinda could never quite tell.
The time for discomfort or modesty was too quickly over as Elphaba and Glinda found themselves stood at the bursar's office receiving their envelopes. They moved away from the immediate scrum of other students and stood in a quiet corridor.
Glinda watched as Elphie ripped open her envelope unceremoniously, glanced in and snorted. She turned eagerly to Glinda. "Well?"
"What about you?"
"Never mind that." She'd got her first, she must have. It had almost been a mathematical impossibility for her not to.
Glinda looked at the envelope, imagining the result spinning inside it like a fruit machine. She just had to open it at the right moment...
"Glinda, please! I'm about to expire with anticipation."
Glinda closed her eyes and ripped it open. She held the letter in front of her face with her eyes still closed. And opened them.
"Oh Elphie..."
"It is, isn't it?" Glinda didn't think Elphie had ever been so nervously excited and it was all for her.
"It is. A first."
Elphaba made the closest noise to a squeal she had ever made and lifted Glinda off the floor with the force of her hug. "You clever girl," she said. "You beautiful, clever girl."
They were still holding on to each other in the hallway – on the basis that if Morrible decided to throw them out they were leaving anyway in a few days – when they were interrupted by Pfannee gliding past icily.
"Horrible Morrible wants to see you both in her office." She delivered her message and sailed onward, not interested in what the overly affectionate and – she assumed – overly achieving pair were going to do with this information.
They looked at each other.
"Not on your life," Elphie said decisively. "We're not doing that again."
Glinda smiled. "Don't worry. I'm a first class sorceress now. No more binding spells for us. Though maybe this time you'll let me kiss you afterwards."
"In our room," Elphie bargained. "You may kiss me in our room, not in the marketplace halfway to the Peach and Kidneys."
"You were so sweet, preserving my modesty."
"Preserving my modesty..." Elphie harumphed. "What would people think of me? You were half fainted and as good as intoxicated."
"It didn't mean I wanted it any less," Glinda said quietly. "Or a hundred times before or since."
"And I was to know that how? I've heard a girl normally gets bought dinner before that sort of thing. That would have been a useful hint."
They hadn't talked about this. That night, easily one of the most wretched of Elphaba's life, when the others had all gone to the Philosophy Club and she had taken a drunk and distressed Glinda home. She had been so small, so sad and clung to Elphie so desperately. Elphie had put her to bed and had stalked about their room feeling like running away, the weight of it all crushing her. In the end though she had sat down on the edge of Glinda's bed and watched her sleep, unable to do anything else.
Also, Elphaba now considered, having spent so much time and energy trying not to kiss the girl. Why had she been trying so hard not to? She forgot now.
Nothing if not obedient with a side helping of curiosity they did end up in the Head's office.
"Ladies," Morrible began. "Please sit."
Elphaba didn't quite commit. Glinda took her hand firmly and sat them both down.
"First let me congratulate you on your superb results. I am of course very proud. I wanted to talk to you particularly about your plans for next year..."
Elphaba tensed.
"... And if you had considered our post graduate programmes?"
Now Elphaba laughed.
"We'll think about it," Glinda said, incredibly relieved herself.
Morrible nodded. "And we'll see you in a few days at graduation?"
Starting to make some sort of excuse Glinda was cut off by Elphie.
"Yes," she said, looking over at Glinda almost shyly. "We'll be there."
With days to spare they had to source some academic gowns to hire at break neck speed. Glinda wished they had decided weeks earlier to attend as Elphaba in those long dark robes, on top of the usual long dark robes, had quite a profound effect on her.
"I would have thought you would like this get up. It is very you, Pfannee was actually right. You can go whooshing about even more effectively."
Elphaba tried it out and found she quite enjoyed it. "Wusch wusch," she said as she let herself in and out of the wash room a few times until the novelty wore off. Glinda didn't think the novelty of watching this little scene would ever wear off, frankly.
Nor did the effect on Glinda of those robes. Even after a few days of making Elphie wear them only to be thoroughly disrobed at every possible opportunity her appetite had still not been sated by the day itself.
Sneaking from the mingling finger buffet pre-ceremony Glinda settled for a housekeeping cupboard as the venue for the next unrobing.
"Bar the door with that broom..." she instructed, tearing at Elphaba in haste.
"We've got ages yet," Elphie reassured her, not at all unhappy about this decision to attend the ceremony now. She was even contemplating losing the deposit on the foolish clothing and just keeping it. For Glinda's sake, as she seemed to like it so much.
"I do so like you in these robes..."
"I have noticed..."
Either Glinda was not as hasty as she had imagined or the finger buffet had been very hasty as it did not seem long before a distant sound reached the cupboard. Names had started being called.
Glinda wrenched herself away.
"We've missed it," Elphie said blankly.
"Not yet. Shall we go?" Glinda looked at her helplessly.
"If we rock up together, covered in dust and panting... well, we'll never here the end of it, let's put it like that."
Another name was called.
Elphie considered their position. "I didn't get all rigged up to miss the blasted thing. And your mother will have me pickled if you miss it."
"Nessa's face will be a picture."
"She'll know we're not there by now, it'll be a picture anyway."
They looked at each other, opened the door, held hands... and ran, whooshing rather dramatically through the corridors.
They skidded in to the hall, barrelling through the double doors still holding hands, before meekly advancing on the podium and receiving their blank bits of paper from Morrible in tandem. They joined the rest of the crowd of fresh graduates for the speeches.
"Today is the first day of the rest of your lives..." Morrible was droning in an address more about her own virtues than the achievements of her students.
Elphaba looked at Glinda and felt rather as though it were.
At the end Elphaba did aim her hat at Morrible. It missed, for which Glinda was very grateful because if the ridiculous girl had been dragged away for chastisement she would not have been able to kiss her thoroughly.
Which she did. In a storm of cheers and the raining of too-flat hats she gathered Elphaba up as best she could and kissed her with all the force of the kisses that never happened and all the ones that were yet to come.